The mission of UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL is to make chamber music more accessible. Chamber music is available, but not always accessible. And chamber musicians can always do a better job at inviting new audiences into their world.

In 2015, Strings Magazine asked nineteen string musicians to answer as spontaneously as possible the question: “why do you play chamber music?”. The original article is at this link but we selected below short excerpts best reflecting how our musicians at UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL think about chamber music.

Just as in life, chamber music by its very nature brings out issues such as hierarchy, balances, choices, and sometimes one must encourage a shy personality to speak up or ask another to follow instead of lead. A 17-year-old student and a 90-year-old veteran can play together. People from different continents with contrasting musical, religious, socio-economic, and political views can put that aside for a common purpose. Musicians of all levels can work as a team. Onstage, we are all one . . . and none of this is surprising, in fact it’s quite normal.

So why do I play chamber music?
Why wouldn’t I?

PAUL COLLETTI, viola, Colburn School of Music faculty

In an orchestra, I try to disappear within my section, but not in chamber music. What I really love is the give and take of a small group—whether in playing or discussing the music—every voice must be heard, but within a hierarchy. Who has the melody at the moment? If it’s not me, I have to figure out how to support the melodic line, giving a solid foundation for it to soar above, and maybe bring out a cool harmony along the way, matching bow strokes with my fellow accompanists. But the melody is always moving from instrument to instrument, and so my role is always changing. Chamber music is dynamic that way. And while a group may work really hard at finding just the right sound in rehearsal, we may do something entirely different in performance. You are always working with, and reacting to, your chamber music partners—and you never play the same thing exactly the same way twice. I feel like you communicate on a different level with chamber music—you don’t always have to speak to reach a consensus, or experiment, or get a really special sound.

SARAH FREIBERG ELLISON, Baroque cello; ‘Strings’ contributing editor

My group does this type of outreach sessions often, particularly in the “inner city.” It truly enriches us individually to see kids jumping up and down in schools, asking all sorts of questions and sometimes excited to pick up an instrument. I think a chamber ensemble is just perfect for these types of activities. Chamber music gives us a chance to experience intimacy at work—it promotes happiness, builds character, and teaches the art of negotiation.

ILMAR GAVILAN, violin, Harlem String Quartet

Whether I am playing Beethoven Sonatas (…), or Schubert’s Cello Quintet, premiering an Elliott Carter sextet, or a new song cycle by Jake Heggie or Luna Pearl Woolf, I am entering a privileged world. It is a world that transcends the limitations of language, a world that moves beyond three dimensions or time as we know it. Without having to leave our orbit, chamber music opens our imaginations and hearts. There is a magical connection that happens between individual players in dialogue, finding a path to the composer’s conception, and ultimately bringing that to life for themselves and for anyone eavesdropping. One loses track of time rehearsing the nuances of balance, role, ensemble, rhetoric, affect, sculpting sound to blend or penetrate when called for. We strive for perfection, understanding.

MATT HAIMOVITZ, cello

Chamber music allows a depth and variety of experience that includes the one-night stand and the long-term relationship in which you can get to an incredible place of unity where you feel like you are not drawing your bow across the string, but your colleague is, and your sounds are enmeshed in the space in between the group and the notes.

COLIN JACOBSEN, violin, Silk Road Ensemble, co-founder of Brooklyn Rider and the Knights

Chamber music is the most rarefied, sophisticated, and intimate literature in the repertoire. It draws the listener into a world that is sublime and intricate, and expresses the whole range of human emotions. It is a delicate, but intense, world in miniature.

ROBERT JESSELSON, cello, University of South Carolina School of Music faculty

I might have to be a soloist one moment, a humble accompanist the next, and at other times a team player in joyous three-part harmony. That is in essence what chamber music is: some of the greatest music ever written that challenges a player’s technique, musicianship, and social skills on the very highest level. That is what I loved about that first chamber-music experience of mine and that is what I still love about it to this very day.

ARNOLD STEINHARDT, violin,Guarneri String Quartet; Colburn School of Music faculty

What remains at the end of the day is often a feeling of having created something much larger than what seemed possible at the beginning of the concert, or even a rehearsal. The scary feeling of being on the spot that I’ve often experienced as I take my seat onstage has been replaced by a triumphant rush at pulling off what seemed highly unlikely at the beginning: the victory of transforming an ordinary evening with an audience unfamiliar with power of the chamber music into an auspicious, possibly even life-changing event. And hearing from audience members that this was as good a concert as it gets. When I think of chamber-music groups around the world performing against tremendous odds financially, and doing such amazing work artistically, it is humbling and strengthens my commitment to this most magical of arts.

MARK SUMMER, cello, Turtle Island Quartet