EVERY civilised man needs his unexpected hinterland, his nook of rare delights into which he can retreat for solace and refreshment when the fever of life seems overwhelming and unending. For Peter Brookes, The Times’s political cartoonist, that nook is four-cornered and full of sweet airs. He is an enthusiast for string quartets.
No, enthusiast is too mild an epithet. Brookes is nuts about these awesome foursomes. To engage him in a discussion about the relative merits of the Amadeus or the Busch, the Skampa or the Endellion, the Emerson or the Alban Berg, is rather like mulling over the infinite qualities of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs with a chocoholic. His eyes glint. The professional cartoonist’s veneer of sardonic cynicism melts away, revealing the pussycat within.
“For me the whole essence of music can be distilled into the quartet form,” he says. “I suppose that’s the equivalent of William Blake seeing a world in a grain of sand. I am pretty well musically illiterate. But I recognise a parallel between the beautifully concise string-quartet form and my own more vulgar struggle to cut the crap and pare things down.”
Brookes, however, is too seasoned a quartet connoisseur to dribble his enthusiasm indiscriminately. For him, one ensemble stands supreme: the epitome of all that is finest in this most refined of musical genres. It is the Borodin Quartet, an indomitable Russian outfit that has now been in existence for a scarcely believable 59 years, since four Moscow Conservatoire students decided to team up in 1945.
“I became a groupie years ago, when they first played at the Wigmore Hall, and then when they were resident at the Aldeburgh Festival,” Brookes says. “They are supreme in the Russian repertoire, of course, particularly Shostakovich. But over the years they have simply been the best all round.”
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Of course, the Borodin have undergone many personnel changes in those 59 years — though the original cellist, Valentin Berlinsky, is still there. “When I first encountered them,” Brookes recalls, “the first violinist was the unmatchably sweet-toned Mikhail Kopelman, and Brezhnev lookalike Dmitri Shebalin was the most doleful of viola players. But the continuity provided by Berlinsky and the second violinist Andrei Abramenkov still gives the ensemble its uniquely magisterial presence. And if Ruben Aharonian, as first violinist, brings a different quality to the Borodin sound, then young Igor Naidin on viola has exactly the right glum look to match his illustrious predecessor.”
Earlier this year, Brookes was invited to sketch the Borodins while they played a cycle of all 18 Beethoven string quartets in a series organised by Norfolk and Norwich Chamber Music. As the quartet prepare to embark on another epic voyage through the Beethoven quartets (this time in the City of London Festival), some of his sketches are reproduced above.
“They are a treat to watch, and therefore draw,” Brookes says. “There’s a certain inscrutability about them, which is nicely offset by the occasional seraphic Berlinsky smile. And what could be better than drawing to the accompaniment of live music? In fact, I’m now thinking of hiring the Borodins to come into the office each day. I’d reclaim their fees on expenses, of course.”