String quartets used to be stuffy. Now, from the Brodskys to young Irish ensembles, they're sassy - and they're everywhere, writes Arminta Wallace

Whatever happened to string quartets? Once stuck at the stuffiest end of the classical-music spectrum, they - and the people who played in them - used to be regarded, even by those in the know, as a bit caviar to the general. Black-tie territory. Elitists in an elite world.

But that was before Elvis Costello got together with the Brodskys to record The Juliet Letters and Kevin Volans produced White Man Sleeps. The first destroyed the notion that quartet repertoire had to be genteel, arcane and ever so slightly staid; the second expanded the traditional purity of the quartet sound palette to include rowdy, vibrant South African idioms. Both sold by the bucketload.

The Kronos Quartet were also shifting vast numbers of CDs while moving effortlessly from St Hildegard of Bingen through dance videos to collaborations with Tuvan throat singers and Roma gypsy bands. In the classical-music spectrum, quartets became the new black.

In Ireland we've been slightly slow to pick up on this 30-year process - the Kronos Quartet was founded in 1973 - but, boy, are we catching up fast. An unprecedented number of highly regarded foursomes is doing the rounds, bringing high-quality music to just about every nook and cranny that will hold an audience.

And things are happening on the wider creative front as well. This year's Dublin Theatre Festival will unveil a new play by Brian Friel. Inspired by Leos Janácek's quartet Intimate Letters, Performances will feature considerable chunks of the latter, performed on stage by the Alba Quartet.

Why now? Christopher Marwood, cellist with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, suggests that the policy of installing quartets in high-profile residencies around the country is paying off. "It's very exciting to see the string quartet taking such a strong foothold in Ireland," he says. "RTÉ started it all some 50 years ago when they appointed the first resident quartet in Cork, and that the residency model has been taken up by two more cities, Sligo and Galway, certainly suggests that the medium of the string quartet suits Ireland well."

The Vanbrughs have enjoyed a highly productive residency at University College Cork and toured the country repeatedly in their 20 or so years of existence - "at the last count we had given over 500 concerts here," says Marwood. In Sligo, the Vogler Quartet has been at the centre of a dramatic expansion of music-making in the county since it was appointed resident quartet there in 1999. Now the Con Tempo Quartet, Galway's newly appointed resident, has ambitious plans to bring music to schools, communities and young musicians of all abilities in addition to regular concerts and recitals.

Festivals, too, have played their part in raising the profile of the quartet nationwide, notably the ESB Vogler Spring Festival and West Cork Chamber Music Festival, founded by the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet in 1996.

"The wonderful thing about a festival," says Marwood, "especially a tightly focused one like ours, is the collective concentration that develops amongst the audience. It offers programmers an opportunity to introduce the unusual, the exotic and even the feared alongside the known and loved. That is how a broad-based cosmopolitan musical culture will grow and thrive. Of course, we have also been able to bring in some of the finest quartets performing today, and that in itself will have done much to promote the genre and to offer insights into the wide stylistic variety on offer."

Kilkenny has been another centre of consistent chamber-music excellence, and this year's arts festival, which opens on Friday, offers two performances by the visiting Kopelman Quartet, whose founder and leader, violinist Mikhail Kopelman, has lived life in the quartet fast lane for more than a quarter of a century.

He played for 20 years with one of Europe's most successful ensembles, the Moscow-based Borodin Quartet. Then his family moved to the US, and he joined the Tokyo Quartet. "If you are to play in a string quartet at a very high level," he says, "you have to be satisfied - and not only you, but all four members have to feel the same way.

"Which," he adds grimly, "didn't happen with the Tokyo Quartet. For me it was difficult to adjust. The decision to leave the Borodins had been very difficult, very prolonged. Then the cellist left. Finally, nobody was happy. The chemistry just didn't work out."

He took a post as a violin teacher at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, but quartet fever wouldn't release its grip. Enter the Kopelman Quartet. Having basked in the Borodin's cachet for so many years, Kopelman is more aware than most of just how difficult it is for a new quartet to carve out a niche on the international scene. So how do the Kopelmans plan to do it? By concentrating on one area of repertoire, perhaps?

"Because we have been together for just a year we don't have a huge repertoire yet," he says. "Of course, we play the classical repertoire, plus some pieces, especially Russian pieces, which are not played very often. Because we are Russian, we think that we can play this music in a particular way which will be exciting for audiences. Of course, it's not only our goal to do something nobody else does, but to play high-quality music."

The Kopelman Quartet's programmes at Kilkenny Arts Festival might have been designed to illustrate how many types of sound can be created by two violins, a viola and a cello. Schubert and Tchaikovsky at St Canice's Cathedral on Sunday, then, at Kilkenny Castle on Monday, Mozart and Shostakovich.

"Mozart's last quartet is a very unique piece," says Kopelman. "When you hear some of the harmonies, you just can't believe it was written by Mozart. And Shostakovich's third quartet is one of his finest, a classical piece with some dark moments, though not as dark as his eighth quartet, which is played much more often. Tchaikovsky's third quartet isn't played very often either, because, first of all, it's very difficult. Second, it's like his last symphony - very personal, very emotional - and, with four big movements, it's quite long. So we thought it would be fantastic to put it together with Schubert's Death And The Maiden quartet."

Repertoire apart, the string quartet has another obvious advantage in these days of funding shortfalls and economic angst: it travels well. "The quartet has repeatedly shown its versatility as an educational medium," says Marwood.

"Organisations like West Cork Music, through its effectively structured music-education schemes, and the managers of the Sligo and now Galway quartet residencies, have shown just how effective the string quartet can be as a medium for taking music into schools and the wider community."

Kopelman, too, believes that building audiences for the future is a matter of some urgency. "It's a question of politics," he says. "What young people hear on radio, what they see on TV, is crucial. In Spain, where two members of our quartet live, many young people come to chamber-music concerts, so maybe the Spanish government is doing something right. In the United States there is a very good system for playing chamber music in universities, so that young people can attend these concerts almost free - and this audience, too, is great."

And what of that old-fangled notion that chamber music is an acquired taste, the musical equivalent of sucking lemons? "I think it's very easy," says Kopelman. "Just listen to recordings. Go to concerts. Then listen some more." Suck it, in other words, and see.

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Four quartets

RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet

Appointed resident quartet to RTÉ way back in 1986, the Vanbrughs won the prestigious London International String Quartet Competition two years later. Now established as a top European outfit, with performancesscheduled this season for the UK, US, Holland, Italy, France and the Czech Republic, they are artists-in-residence at University College Cork and founded the innovative West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry in 1996.

Their discography ranges from the complete Beethoven quartets to contemporary works by Irish composers; their first volume of Boccherini's cello quintets was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone magazine; a second volume will be released this autumn. Their next nationwide tour, with the pianist Joanna MacGregor, begins in Kilkenny on October 1st.

Callino Quartet

Fame academy? This all-female ensemble, which was shortlisted for this year's London International String Quartet Competition, first played together at a masterclass at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 1999 and was selected shortly afterwards as the first chamber group on Music Network's Young Musicwide programme.

Currently touring Norway - "we're just about to get on a plane for Bodo and head for the midnight sun," says cellist Sarah McMahon - the Callinos return to Ireland for a gig at Bantry House in mid-November, part of an education programme with Cork schools.

Have they settled into any area of repertoire? "We're still getting to grips with the core classical repertoire: Beethoven and Haydn and stuff," says McMahon. "We're also doing quite a bit of contemporary music, and we've had some new commissions from Irish composers. To be honest, we're enjoying the diversity." Catch them in Roscrea on November 26th, Limerick onthe 27th.

Con Tempo

Take four Romanian students at the Music University in Bucharest, put them together and you get this highly acclaimed quartet, which toured extensively and won prizes by the fistful before settling down to a stint as ensemble-in-residence in Galway. It recently recorded the adagio from Beethoven's Opus 131 for the television series Band Of Brothers, but all that glamour will be behind them (just kidding) when they embark on an autumn programme of outreach work in Connemara. "The idea is to bring chamber music to areas which wouldn't have been exposed to it in the past," says Padraig O'Dineen, administrator of the residency. Plans are also afoot for Kronos-style collaborations with traditional musicians. Catch them at Clifden Arts Festival next month and at Baboró children's arts festival in October. They'll also be appearing on TG4's National Music Awards programme in mid-November.

Oriel Quartet

Not strictly ballroom in the classical sense, perhaps, but this quartet regularly has them dancing in the aisles in Galway and environs and points to an alternative way for young string players to earn a living. "Astor Piazzolla and tango is a big part of our repertoire," says cellist Liz Barry. "We also play Gershwin and Cole Porter, classical show music." Founded by Barry and violinist Hugh Kelly, two former students of Cork School of Music, the Oriel Quartet draws on a pool of young music professionals for its busy schedule of weddings and functions. "We don't advertise; we get our gigs by doing gigs," says Barry, who also plays baroque music with Galway's Cathedral Players and, in the spirit of quartet chic, a bit of trad. Jigs and reels on the cello? "You can't play fast traditional tunes on the cello," she says. "But for O'Carolan or some of the slow airs it really adds another dimension to the sound."