Interview with CBC's Katherine Duncan at BISQC 2013

This is a very special day at Banff International String Quartet Competition: the day that all 10 quartets will give the world premiere of the String Quartet No. 3 by Canadian composer Vivian Fung.For the audience, it's a kind of Rorschach test, a chance to hear how each quartet responds to exactly the same original work. There are no recordings, no previous performances, so each quartet is forced to come up with their own interpretation. It can tell you a lot about a quartet's originality, creativity and musical street smarts.For the composer, it's the chance to hear not one but 10 world premieres, back-to-back-to-back. I caught up with the Edmonton-born, New York-based Fung earlier this week in Banff to find out more about the experience.

Duncan: How did you come to write the piece?Fung: I'm not sure how they chose me, but I got an email from [BISQC director] Barry Shiffman saying that they wanted to work with me, and explaining the parameters of the commission: write a 10-minute piece for string quartet, to be ready in time for this summer's BISQC. I couldn't say no to such a wonderful opportunity.Duncan: What attracted you to the project?Fung: I've written two string quartets already, so this is String Quartet No. 3, and I just love the medium of the string quartet. To have the privilege of working with 10 very talented string quartets here is an incredible time for any composer.Duncan: What is it about the string quartet medium that you love?Fung: I'm a pianist myself but I studied the cello for three or four years. My cello teacher was fantastic, and after a while he said, let's not do this any more, let's just listen to some music. That was a blessing because I got acquainted with old recordings of Pablo Casals and Paul Tortelier and all these different recordings of string music. They made me aware of what the possibilities were, not only for the cello but for the other instruments. That initial exposure to such great recordings gave me an affinity for writing for strings.String quartet is the perfect medium, I think. It's the most democratic group for chamber music: you have four instruments, very similar in sound (as compared to a woodwind ensemble or an orchestra, for example). You have four members who can act as four individuals, or you can have them act as one entity, or 3 + 1, 2 + 2 — there are so many combinations, and I find that to be very inspiring and very creative.Duncan: How did knowing you were writing for a competition affect your compositional process?Fung: The commission had to be no longer than 10 minutes, and it needed to have some room for improvisation, so the quartets could bring their own personalities to it. Also I wasn't allowed to have any contact with the quartets (until arriving in Banff this week), so I had to make sure the score was as clear as possible, that there was no ambiguity. That's different from the way I usually work, which is to collaborate with the performers, so to have no interaction was tough for me.Duncan: Your piece is called String Quartet No. 3, which doesn't really reveal very much. Can you give us some clues about what we're going to hear?Fung: I think this is a very intense work. In fact I have the words "intense and passionate" written several times in the score. It's a very personal quartet for me. It's really about addressing questions of faith and spirituality at a time when you see, especially living in the U.S., what's around us: shootings of children, wars going on in the Middle East. I was writing it around the time of Lent, just before Easter, and all these things came into this quartet. It's really about my personal expression of faith, of the flaws of just being human, and what that means. Going through the rehearsal today, I actually welled up with tears.Duncan: You're going to hear it played 10 times in a row. What are you hoping to hear from the quartets?Fung: The greatest thing for me as a composer is for each of the quartets to personalize the music, so it's not just notes on the page, it's that they're interpreting the music as if it were their own, bringing the piece to life. Beyond that, as a composer you're always thinking long-term, so the greatest honour would be for them to like the piece enough that it would have a life after the competition.

-Katherine Duncan, CBC MusicSource. You can listen to all 10 world premieres of Vivian Fung's String Quartet No.3 beginning this afternoon at 2PM MST (4PM EST) on CBC Music. And you'll hear one performance on "In Concert" on Sunday, Sept. 8, on CBC Radio 2.