Who is Quatuor Akilone and what inspired you to form this ensemble?
Quatuor Akilone is an all-female quartet, based in Albi in the South of France. “Akilone” comes from the Italian word aquilone, meaning “kite”. This reflects our motto “les pieds sur terre, la tête dans les nuages” (“our feet on the ground, our heads in the clouds”), symbolising the connection between the tangible and the elusive.
The quartet was formed at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP) and our first mentor was Vladimir Mendelssohn (Enesco Quartet). Later, Hatto Beyerle (Alban Berg Quartet and European Chamber Music Academy) guided us, especially in rhetoric, language, and spirituality. He taught us to make informed choices by studying a composer’s rules and intentions, an approach we apply to all our repertoire. We then bring the music to life by giving it parts of ourselves and speaking with
our hearts.
Winning the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in 2016 changed our lives, and we have been fortunate to receive support and funding from organisations like ProQuartet, Fondation Banque Populaire, Fondation Singer-Polignac, and Anima Music Foundation.
What influences your repertoire choice and has this changed over the years?
We are each passionate about different periods of music, allowing us to explore the evolution of musical language and different genres. Recently we have been leaning towards focusing more on new music, some of which we commission. We love delving into the reasons behind making music, which has led us to work on several interdisciplinary projects.
This year you are working on a new Dvořák project. Can you share how this came about?
In October, we are releasing our second album Deep in the Forest under the Klarthe label, which includes Dvořák’s Cypresses, a collection of string quartet miniatures, and his Quartet No. 14 Op. 105. We were first introduced to Cypresses many years ago by Vladimir Mendelssohn, who recently passed away, making this album a homage to him.
As part of our preparation, we travelled to the Czech Republic last June, funded by a European Union “Culture Moves Europe” grant. This fantastic opportunity allowed us to explore Dvořák’s world from various perspectives. We received coaching from the Talich Quartet, visited notable sites (including Dvořák’s birthplace in Nelahozeves, his museum in Prague, his memorial in Vysoka, and his tomb in Vysehrad), and delved into the link between traditional Czech music and Dvořák’s compositions. We met traditional musicians, learned to dance the Czech polka, attended a folk festival, and enjoyed a performance by the violinist and singer Iva Bittova. Hearing the soft and lilting Czech language helped us to connect with Dvořák’s music. As Dvořák originally composed Cypresses for voice and piano (with poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský), before transcribing it for string quartet 20 years later, it is important to connect the sound of the poetry with our playing. In Dvořák’s music one must always “sing”, never force, celebrating life and nature with simplicity and humility.
During our trip, we recorded a podcast directed by musicologist and journalist Tristan Labouret. It’s available on all platforms from September and allows us to reach a wider audience and offer a glimpse into our daily journey and exploration of Dvořák.
Lastly, we wanted to reflect on the interaction between humans and nature, seeking ways to live more respectfully within our environment. We made several videos in the Grésigne Forest in Occitania, where the surroundings reflect the nature described in Dvořák’s Cypresses. We aimed to capture the environment in both sound and image, featuring live recordings of us playing in the forest.
What other projects and collaborations are you looking forward to?
Our Dvořák project has been a significant undertaking, spanning nearly two years, but we always work on multiple projects simultaneously. Currently, we are challenging the standard string quartet concert format. We aim to create a unique concert experience that is transformative for the audience and better reflects our quartet’s personality. Standard string quartet concerts often follow a repetitive format, neglecting the unique aspects of each performance space, such as architecture, acoustics, auditorium, and the venue’s history. We want to develop unique experiences for each performance space, allowing audiences to experience the masterpieces of string quartet repertoire in new ways.
We are exploring this topic from various perspectives and with different partners. We have delved into microtonality and polyrhythmic with GMEA (National Center for Music Creation of Albi-Tarn in France) and world music performer Jérôme Désigaud. We have commissioned a new piece
Cinq transformations (“Five transformations”) by the French Chinese composer Xu Yi, and we have worked on our relationship with space through the MERITA platform, the experimentadesign architecture company in Portugal, and Portuguese theatre director João Garcia Miguel and musician Rui Gato. This project pushes us out of our comfort zone, exploring world music and oral tradition, and moving on and around the stage while playing. We also aspire to learn more about improvisation, although it will take time to master.
How do you see your role within the classical music landscape?
The classical music world is both vast and intimate, with many phenomenal performers and string quartets. We are confident in our unique personality and approach. Performing in large concert halls is as important to us as playing in intimate spaces or at outdoor cross-genre festivals. Each performance influences our relationship with the concert itself, and we often find meaning when playing for small audiences, as we can directly see the impact of our music.
As a string quartet, we are fortunate to perform almost anywhere, bringing classical music to places and audiences that haven’t had the opportunity to attend a concert, such as disadvantaged neighbourhoods, prisons, hospitals, and schools. We have been working on this for years with partners, including Musethica, Les Concerts de Poche, and ProQuartet in France.
Finally, we are committed to engaging our own generation with classical music and raising awareness of its incredible heritage. We are experimenting with different approaches, such as performing in various concert spaces and communicating on social media.
Finally, what does your dream performance or collaboration look like?
We want to expand the quartet’s reach internationally and would love to return to the UK, with its incredible concert venues. We especially cherish intergenerational collaborations as they allow us to interact and make music with artists who have been on stage for decades, enriching our experience. We would be delighted to play again with Quatuor Talich or Tabea Zimmermann, and to collaborate with Steven Isserlis or the Chiaroscuro Quartet.
Our dream performance would transform the concert experience into a spiritual journey, where the connection between the quartet and the audience is so harmonious and powerful that the music stirs deeply, conveying its message from heart to heart and elevating us all spiritually. There are rare concerts where time stops and moments become eternal, and this can be life changing. It might be presumptuous, but this is our dream.
IAM was in conversation with the Quatuor Akilone (violinists Magdalena Geka and Elise De-Bendelac; violist Perrine Guillemot-Munck; and cellist Lucie Mercat), currently based in the South of France. To discover more about the quartet and its upcoming projects, visit quatuorakilone.com/
