Classical Music

The Henschels – Monika, Christoph and Markus – are assembling on Sunday morning. No, not on the principle that the family that prays together stays together, more that siblings who play together win acclaim in chamber music and prizes for recordings. Sunday finds the Henschel Quartet (the fourth is a non-family member, cellist Mathias Beyer-Karshø) giving a Wigmore coffee – or sherry, if preferred – concert in the middle of their latest English tour, sandwiched between Nottingham and Ripon. The German ensemble is happy to return to one of the first international halls to book them years ago, while the English provinces remind them of the network of music clubs that helped make their name. ‘We made our career through Britain and Japan, not straight away in Germany,’ explains Monika, ‘through the cities with music societies and circles.’ Feature continues

Even Germany, a country that Kultur-hungry Brits regard as paradise, has financial problems. But Monika, a delightful and cheerful violist – yes, they have viola jokes in Germany too, she giggles – sees a glass half-full. The decline of an older chamber music public means there’s ‘room for the new’. And this apparently most staid of musical forms is undergoing a vibrant renaissance. The German director of a documentary film on chamber music’s new popularity is accompanying the Henschels to the Wigmore. ‘Even people with no classical background have a feeling that something’s happening. We’ve had our portraits in German magazines.’ The Henschel Quartet takes youth seriously.

‘We have a trust fund to encourage the young. We go to kindergartens to talk and play.’ The foursome are ambassadors for SOS Children’s Villages, an organisation for abandoned children and orphans working in 132 countries: ‘For ten years we’ve helped them with 1 per cent of our income.’ The Henschels were brought up in an inescapably musical atmosphere. Father was a string-player in the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, mother played piano and harpsichord. The famous Sergiu Celibidache, the conductor’s conductor, lived with the family for two years. When he moved on, ‘Uncle Sergiu’ asked the family to go with him.

The various Henschel households are now in Munich. As Monika points out, family ensembles are not that unusual – she reels off names from Belgium, Germany and America. The quartet doesn’t share Uncle Sergiu’s dislike of the recording process. ‘We have a very good production team we trust,’ says Monika, who’s aware that chamber music, a precise form, combined with recording’s all-hearing ear, imposes restrictions so that ‘your style might simply not develop… We listen to records from over ten years ago and say we wouldn’t be playing like that nowadays.’ Sunday finds them performing Szymanowski, the second quartet and Brahms in C minor, ‘written close to Munich,’ says Monika. One of the advantages playing in a chamber group has over being a soloist, says Monika, is that you don’t have to travel on your own. ‘And you always have someone to listen to you, to question what you do.’ She pauses. ‘Which of course you might not always like.’ But so far the family remains harmonious.