Chamber Music: The Brothers Four

• Share

Francis: Actually —

Robert: You see, we've been playing together since birth and —

William: Oh c'mon. You make it sound like we were playing the violin

in the crib. I was at least six before —

Robert: I mean we can read each other's minds; we —

Joseph: What it comes down to is a unity of thought.

Francis: However —

William: A unity of sound, really.

Francis: But —

Joseph: And temperament. Lots of Italian temperament.

Francis: Love! That's what it is. We're all hardheaded, but we've got lots of love.

As any scarred musician will attest, one of the quickest ways to lose friends is to engage in the precarious art of chamber music. With everyone trying to be boss, squabbles over interpretation can become downright nasty. And with the members of the de Pasquale String Quartet — Joseph, 45, viola; Francis, 44, cello; Robert, 37, and William, 32, violins — it's even more so. They fight constantly. The difference is, they revel in it. But then they are brothers, and this, they explain, is the secret to successful shouting contests.

"With four strangers," says Joseph, "you couldn't insult each other the way we do. There is no malice, and we get it all out of our system. It's very healthy." All members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the brothers practice 20 hours a week at their old homestead in the Germantown section of the City of Brotherly Love. "When things get too violent," explains Robert, "Mama has to come in from the kitchen to mediate." There is nothing, they say, like Mama's eggs in purgatorio (fried eggs smothered in sautéed tomatoes) and a spot of vino to cool a heated brow.

In Bold Relief. Last week the de Pasquale String Quartet made its Manhattan debut in Town Hall and all was sweet accord. Billed as the FIRST ALL-BROTHER QUARTET IN MUSICAL HISTORY, they were a trifle jittery in the opening Hayden Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, but soon found their stride. Turning to the contemporary, their readings of Quincy Porter's Quartet No. 3 and Vin cent Persichetti's Quartet No. 2 crackled with clean precision. In Dvorák's Quar tet in F Major, Op. 96, their tempos, if sometimes inflexible, were brisk and lively, their tone as rich and heady as a draught of May wine. Neither muscular nor mushy, their approach was marked by a warmth and intuitive sensitivity that projected the sweep of the music in bold relief.

For the brothers de Pasquale, the concert was the realization of an old man's dream. Papa de Pasquale, an im migrant violin teacher, had one ideal in life: to raise a professional string quartet. But in Germantown baseball was the thing, and the de Pasquale boys were forever tossing their baseball equipment out of the second-floor window and sneaking off to the diamond. On Sunday afternoons, however, they were held captive in the living room and made to listen to recordings by Kreisler and Casals. "That's what it should sound like," Papa would say, and then he would lead the boys through their paces. If a little extra encouragement was needed, Papa administered a smart rap on the head with his violin bow. Gradually, recalls Francis, "we learned to love, chamber music as much as he did."