T hatthe musicians of the Chiaroscuro Quartet play with classical bows on gut strings and use a historical approach in their work together is no secret. ‘But sometimes it’s actually better not to know,’ says cellist Claire Thirion. Seeing things through a historical lens is, it turns out, far from their primary motivation. ‘I think our main thing is sound, contrast and the message,’ explains first violinist Alina Ibragimova. ‘Every note has to have a message and anything we do stylistically is to help with that message. So we don’t do rules. Everything is done for an expressive reason – there’s no dynamic marking, no little dot on a note that doesn’t have an emotional reason behind it.’
The members of the quartet are in good spirits when we meet in a London hotel lobby, a year after the sessions themselves, to talk about their recording of Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets K575, K589 and K590, the last three string quartets the composer wrote in his short life. At various points in the conversation, little plates of food arrive which the quartet have ordered, meaning we talk more about broccoli than is usual in a discussion about Mozart, and agree on the virtues of the vegetable. ‘Coming from different countries,’ says Thirion, ‘we have so much to say about food. And we all love cooking, wherever we are.’