The Spark that Stays Lit
The legacy of the Cleveland Quartet lives on, in large part through an award in its name.
“Many string quartets have fallen by the wayside over the years, but not the winners of the Cleveland Quartet Award,” said Clementina Fleshler, executive director of the Buffalo Chamber Music Society (BCMS), referring to the biennial prize given to an exceptional young ensemble. The recognition, she added, “ensured their careers would be inviolate.”
The award was established in 1995 to honor the legacy of the Cleveland Quartet, which disbanded that year. Founded in 1969 by the violinists Donald Weilerstein and Peter Salaff, the violist Martha Strongin Katz, and the cellist Paul Katz, the ensemble (initially called the New Cleveland Quartet) released some 70 albums and performed more than 2,500 concerts during a distinguished career that included performing more than two dozen complete Beethoven quartet cycles in Europe, the US, and Japan, and playing at Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. In its heyday, the Cleveland Quartet was singular. As critic Edward Rothstein noted in a 1980 review, “The Cleveland Quartet has established something all too rare in ensemble playing: a coherent personality… young, thoughtful, energetic, and distinctly American in its insistent directness.” To break the ice with audiences, they offered lively commentaries about the music from the stage before it became common for classical musicians to do so. They also frequently commissioned new works from American composers, including Samuel Adler, John Harbison, Libby Larsen, and Stephen Paulus. In its final year, the ensemble gave the world premieres of Osvaldo Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and John Corigliano’s String Quartet no. 1 (“Farewell”). Their recording of the latter on the Telarc label won a Grammy in 1996. In 1973, the ensemble became the first classical musicians to perform on the Grammy Awards annual telecast.
In program notes accompanying the farewell tour in 1995, Katz—currently a professor at the New England Conservatory, and a former president of CMA’s Board of Directors—wrote: “This quartet that we treasure, rich and irreplaceable as it is, has been all consuming, and the 150-180 days a year away from our families has been much too much over the years.” After noting the ensemble’s accomplishments, he added: “None of these wonderful endeavors, however, equals the joy and fulfillment we are experiencing from the creation of the Cleveland Quartet Award…. what better way to finish our career together than to help perpetuate our most important legacy: future generations of artists of excellence.”
The group, which has also included the esteemed violist Atar Arad, who replaced Strongin Katz in 1980, hatched the idea for the award with arts consultant David Bury and former CMA executive director Dean Stein. “Touring is the hardest thing for a young quartet to get into, and many of them simply give up,” James Dunham, who began as the Cleveland’s violist in 1987, told the New York Times in 1995. “The award could give a real lift to a deserving group at a crucial time.”
“The Cleveland Quartet name still holds a certain magic,” said Fleshler. “When you say someone won the award it’s an endorsement, one that guarantees winners a chance to perform on a prestigious circuit.” In addition to the BCMS, seven other presenters participate, including: Carnegie Hall; the Chamber Music Society of Detroit; the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC; Friends of Chamber Music in Kansas City, Mo.; Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg, Pa.; the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Texas Performing Arts.
To celebrate the opening of the BCMS’s centennial season, which began in October and runs through April 30, Fleshler presented the Aizuri Quartet, winners of the 2022 Cleveland Quartet Award. The Aizuri’s program included the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Azure Waves, commissioned by the BCMS. (Higdon had worked with the Aizuri while they were ensemble-in-residence at the Curtis Institute of Music from 2014 to 2016).
On January 20 at CMA’s annual conference, a “Cleveland Quartet Jubilee” will include performances by three previous award winners: the Parker, Borromeo, and Verona quartets. The next day, the Balourdet Quartet will receive the 2024 award. The Balourdet—which recently made its Carnegie Hall debut, gave a world premiere in London’s Wigmore Hall, and commissioned a new string quartet by Karim Al-Zand—attributes its ambition and success to the influence of the Cleveland Quartet. “We all grew up idolizing their recordings and frankly, their contribution to music making is much of what actually lit the spark in each of us to fall in love with the string quartet,” the group said in an emailed statement. The award ups that ante. “When we got the call from CMA we were beyond excited. It was one of the great moments in each of our lives and in our life together as a quartet. To receive an award honoring the legacy of our musical heroes goes beyond an honor for us.”
Teaching is an important part of the Cleveland legacy, which for Katz takes on special meaning in this context. “I would like someone to do a psychological case study of the chamber musician,” he said. “There is something about choosing your life in chamber music that means you like people and interacting with people. Most chamber musicians enjoy teaching. Some soloists love teaching, but the solo personality is different.”
Residency programs enabled the Cleveland to establish a teaching and performing profile early on: it was the Cleveland Institute of Music’s first quartet- in-residence, and the ensemble had further residencies at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, NY. The proliferation of outstanding young string quartets in the 21st century is, for Katz, in part thanks to the programs that have been established in the last few decades. “When we were a quartet, and even today, it’s virtually impossible to play enough concerts to have a meaningful income. The US has become the world center for the string quartet residency system, which provides a financial base.”
The violinist Miho Saegusa, a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, agrees that residencies are vital to develop a teaching profile. “Within the chamber music field,” says Emma Frucht, the group’s other violinist, “there is a lot of emphasis on passing the torch and sharing knowledge with younger generations.” She acknowledges the sacrifice inherent in founding a string quartet and committing to the long term. “Financially speaking, in terms of scheduling, in terms of your own individual playing opportunities, you’re really putting the group first. The support from Chamber Music America encou∂rages younger musicians to pursue this path.
One stark truth facing quartets is that ensembles invariably experience some turnover: the award’s namesake, for example, saw two of its founding members depart. The criteria for the Cleveland Quartet Award stipulate that there should have been no more than one personnel change in the year before the nomination for the award.
The Aizuri lost two founding members in the two-year touring period after winning the award. The violist Ayane Kozasa (a fulltime viola professor at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and half of the cello-viola duo Ayane & Paul) and the cellist Karen Ouzounian (who performs with Silkroad Ensemble and The Knights) left the Aizuri at the end of the summer of 2023. Frucht and Saegusa initially had their doubts about whether to continue, given the energy required to manage a search process for two new members.
“One big question we were asking ourselves when we were trying to figure out what the future of the quartet would look like is, do we believe in the future of this group?” Frucht told the Boston Globe in July 2023. In an email, Saegusa explained that being in a quartet “creates close bonds between the four members. Although personnel transitions are part of quartet life, Emma and I felt a mix of emotions: sadness that Ayane and Karen were going to step down, and excitement for their next steps and adventures. We are grateful that our mentors were supportive and encouraging through this process. One great piece of advice was to embrace the unique strengths and qualities of the new members, and not try to simply recreate what we had before.” In September 2023, the group began touring with two new members, the violist Brian Hong and the cellist Caleb van der Swaagh.
In addition to the rules about personnel changes, the award guidelines stipulate that groups: must be based in the US; have been performing together for a minimum of six and a maximum of ten years; be engaged in significant outreach efforts to underserved communities; and have US-based management. CMA manages the award process, then turns over the touring logistics to the group’s management. The confidentiality of the awards process resembles that of the Gilmore Artist Award, which is awarded every four years to a concert pianist who is unaware they are being discretely assessed via recordings and performances.
For the Cleveland award, nominations are submitted confidentially by a jury of chamber musicians, presenters, and educators who are selected by the Cleveland Quartet Award Steering Committee in conjunction with Susan Dadian, associate director of grant programs at CMA. The Cleveland musicians “wanted a voice, but not a controlling voice” in the process, explained Katz, noting that they teach and mentor so many young chamber musicians that it was necessary to excuse themselves from being on the jury that ultimately selects the winning quartet. The confidential selection process was created with a “do no harm” mentality, said Katz, explaining that the founders wanted “to help young groups establish themselves but not hurt anyone.”
“If the groups being considered don’t get the award, no one ever knows,” he said. “We didn’t want to create losers.” Those who are selected get noticed in the best of ways. Considering the flourishing careers of the ensembles who have been recognized since 1995— which include the Brentano, Borromeo, Miami, Pacifica, Miró, Jupiter, Parker, and Jasper quartets—it seems that the award has indeed, as Fleshler proposed, bestowed a degree of inviolability on its winners. In addition to honoring musical achievements, the award has encouraged those facing unexpected challenges to regroup, readjust, and re-commit, which are also parts of the Cleveland’s Quartet’s remarkable legacy.
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