The Brooks Quartet

The Brooks Quartet are an exciting new string quartet who formed in September '07 at the Royal Academy of Music, where they won the Wolfe Wolfinsohn String Quartet Prize in its inaugural year. This season they were invited to perform at the London Quartet Symposium, the Messiaen Festival, the Schubert Festival and the RAM Club Prize. As well as giving recitals across England, they also collaborate with acclaimed accordionist Milos Milivojevic performing works by Piazzola and Abrahamsen. The Brooks quartet have a keen interest in performing new music, and will be recording a new work by contemporary composer Colin Dexter in Angel Studios in May. They are supported by the John Baker Development Award.

So we arrived yesterday morning minus a cellist (on a project at Glyndebourne) and our violist, Ian - who's ALWAYS late; meetings, rehearsals, semiquavers etc. The two punctual violinists attended the entire welcome meeting where all the tutors introduced themselves and shared some of their quartet experiences. We then discussed where to seat the cellist for about 20 minutes. No conclusion was achieved!

After lunch, our dishevelled cellist arrived just in time for our first masterclass with Johannes Meissl. We were feeling a little apprehensive as we'd not played together for two weeks (Irish second violinist taking full advantage of the free bar at a wedding back in Dublin) so we sounded a little rusty to begin with. But we received some lovely feedback from the nun who was watching. Get in.

Immediately after, we sprinted into our next coaching with Christoph Richter, who replaced our in-demand cellist who had to run off again! We're considering trio rep! We learned a huge amount from actually playing with him, and he was a total legend too. One particularly memorable moment was him asking us to 'play eet breastless...'!!! Lol. We've got two coachings this afternoon, and then a 'social supper' at the chairman's townhouse this evening. It'll be nice to meet the other quartets here, as there's been a lack of cross-quartet bonding as yet.

In the afternoon we had our first coaching with the lovely cellist from the Vermeer Quartet, Marc Johnson. After some confusion over the changed schedule and room, we eventually found where we were meant to be and had a fantastic session. He was brilliant, we love him!

And then. We met out next coach. DISASTER. Language barrier was immediately a problem, which meant the situation was already fraught. Coupled with the fact that he had opposing views on most elements of the piece, it was a thoroughly gruelling experience.

However, we had the chance to recuperate at a meal laid on by Mr and Mrs Chairman at their unbelievable townhouse near to the Academy. It was great to finally relax with some wine (some of us more than others, hey Ian?!) and meet some of the other groups. We left our slightly merry viola player with a group of very capable 14-year-old girls... oh dear.