How did you begin to play together as a quartet?

The quartet members met in 2000 during the tour with the "Orchestra da camera Italiana", which the orchestra was founded by an Italian violinist Salvatore Accardo. For a long time, I had a great interest in starting the quartet, not necessarily planning on a career itself, however. During the tour, I had an opportunity to express my interest to a longtime friend, Simone (the viola player), who was with me in the tour, and asked others in the orchestra to join to form an ensemble. Since, it took about two years before we were able to establish a string quartet as what we are today.

Where were your quartet members born and where do you all live now?

We are all natives of Genoa, Italy. Genoa is a beautiful sea side city located in northern Italy and our quartet is based here in Genoa.

What period music do you enjoy playing the most and why?

I guess it depends on who do you ask among the quartet members. Speaking for myself, I particularly like to play the 20th century and contemporary music; I enjoy playing Bartok, Webern, and other contemporary music. I find it challenging in some ways but at the end, they are much easier to perform on the stage. In general, we mostly studied classical repertoire, particularly Haydn. For me, works by Haydn represents the beginning of and the direction to developing a good framework for the quartet playing. This includes but not limited to, learning to develop a good dialogue communication among players and reviving and fine tuning of the music to express your thoughts while maintaining its freedom of the overall music. Despite how "easy" Haydn may sound, in our opinion, Haydn is one of the most difficult music to perform well on the stage.

However, works of Beethoven have a special place in our hearts. If there is a music that could unite the classical style with the nuances of romanticists offer, Beethoven's music speaks for all in his string quartet. His music presents the well mix of spontaneity, philosophical gesture and humor to the level that was not possible by the composers before him.

What was the music that changed your life?

Well, it occurred throughout the stages … When I was teenager, I listened to Italian pop music and I though that changed my life. Than, I discovered Pink Floyd and Genesis and thought I had found the music for life. Of course I was already studying classical music (I started when I was 7) however, at the time, I didn't listen to much classical music. The first listening experience of string quartet music was Shostakovich. I knew from a distant memory listening to his quartet no.3 and that was the first piece our quartet to study. The Bartok quartets and even Beethoven were later discovery and I started to listen to it only after the quartet undertook deeper studies on the classical language. Discovering the Beethoven quartets have changed my way of seeing and hearing the music, as I mentioned earlier. I would say that his music changed my life by enriching all levels of my understanding about the music in general. I am grateful to the geniuses who lived before us leaving so many masterpieces that we can listen to and learn from.

Do you have any upcoming concerts?

Yes, we have many concerts scheduled for next few years. Upcoming performances include debut in Konzerthaus, Berlin, and Santa Cecilia, Rome. We performed couple of times in Wigmore Hall in London and we are going back twice this year. Something that we are very proud of is our residency at "Società del Quartetto" in Milan, one of the oldest societies and probably the most important chamber music society in Italy. The residency of this society will end in 2014. During the residency, we will perform Beethoven’s quartet cycle, a musical experience that we look forward to. This may be a monumental task for our quartet but at the same time, it is also a great opportunity to learn and get to know Beethoven intimately. Such residency programs may be well established in other countries. However, in Italy, it is something rather new. We are very pleased to have been selected by the Società del Quartetto for the inauguration of something that we hope it will become a part of Italy’s arts and culture. In the past, we performed in Italy, Australia, USA, South America and most places in Europe.

Your quartet name “Quartetto di Cremona”… tell us about it.

One of the most frequent questions public ask is “why Quartetto di Cremona"? In Cremona, there is a famous music school called "Stauffer Academy" founded by Salvatore Accardo. Every year, this school gathers some of the most talented string players from the country and other parts of the world. It is one of very few places in Italy (the other one is the "Scuola di musica di Fiesole" where we studied) where it offers an opportunity for one to form an ensemble. Well, our quartet began in Cremona. Cremona is also the city of world renowned string instrument makers, such as Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri, to mention few in our history. Therefore, we felt that "Cremona" was the name for our string quartet and we decided since.

How did you learn about the International WCH competition?

My colleague Simone, our viola player is a technology guru and he found the competition on the web and we decided to participate based on what we have learned about the competition’s history.

What do you hope to achieve as a musician and as a group?

Each one of us is putting all their time and energy into the quartet since we decided to start the ensemble. The quartet is our life and livelihood and we share one common goal; to be the best quartet player as we can possibly be. This is what keeps us together and we hope to achieve.

We think that the quartet should be the sum of four strong individuals that have a common goal. This is what we constantly strive for and trying not to cut corners of the personal differences but to make them work within the idea so that we have the whole at the end. Something that we care very much about is what makes the people love the music. We have witnessed too much gap between the audience and the performers. The very idea that the classical music is only for the affluent by a lay person has been largely a misconception. We believe this is wrong and we work towards communicating the inner beauty of the music to wider public so that the people who attend our concerts may go home with refreshing feelings about music.

Another thing that we care about is the audience of new generation. Children in Italy have little or no exposure in music education. Therefore, when time permits, we organize concerts in local schools to demonstrate the instruments, hoping that will kindle their interest in the classical music. For example, we talk about imaginary stories that complement the music we perform and even making then sing with us while we play. The enthusiasm for the classical music, we learned from the experience performing in the schools, is something that children have and later they loose interest in the classical music. This may be generated from peer pressure and media, meaning that classical music is difficult, outdated, and not cool. Such can be influenced from many venues, such as media and often, simply from listening to bad musicians. One of the examples I often bring to the table is that all music can sound boring and outdated if performed badly. For example, songs by Beatles; Beatles song sung by 4 bad rock players would sound awful! The same is in classical music: it takes well trained and appropriately addressed performers to gain the audience's interest.

The career of a string quartet is not easy: it takes a lot of everything to confront an unpredictable path, especially at the beginning of career. This journey is made of mostly small steps, and the big ones arrive normally when you least expected. So, one must always give their best at all times.

Last year, we started some teaching projects. At the moment, we are in the midst of a special project with our home town's conservatoire in Genoa (Paganini Conservatoire). We feel that it is appropriate time to invest in teaching for the younger generation of musicians of what we learnt from great musicians like Hatto Beyerle from the Berg Quartet and Piero Farulli from the Quartetto Italiano, and from playing on the stage for the last 10 years as a quartet.

This is a very good moment in our career as a group. Since 2010, we have an average of more than 1 concert every 2 days, and we have concerts scheduled until 2015. We hope that the Web Concert Hall Competition will give us the opportunity to play more in the USA where we visit rarely. We'd love to export a bit of our Italian sound abroad!

Who were some of your chamber music teachers?

The quartet received lessons from many musicians but the teachers that have influenced us were Piero Farulli of the Quartetto Italiano and Hatto Beyerle, founder and violist of the Alban Berg Quartet.

Piero Farulli was the first who heard us and encouraged us to make decision on pursuing quartet as our career. However, Beyerle was more important on shaping our musical side. He worked specifically on repertoire. If I think about it now, I can’t tell which offered more important lessons. I think they have been very complementary in shaping who we are today.

How some of your teachers or coaches did influenced your group as a musician?

I think each one of us was influenced in different ways speaking with such great teachers. A good teacher knows that each member of a quartet has different “things” to work on. So, caring each one of us in the quartet, the group grows in a healthy way and this is what our teachers have tried to achieve with us.

How did other chamber group influence you as a quartet?

I remember that the first group that made an impression on us was Szymonowsky Quartet. When we first heard them, they played the Haydn's "Last seven words" and we were very impressed. At the moment, it was our beginning of paving the way to become a quartet players.

Is your quartet in resident faculty at any place in Europe?

Teaching is something that we are now beginning to do. We are a young quartet and we are now being invited to teach master classes in many schools. We taught in the Royal Northern College of Manchester (UK), in Austria, and in Italy, we started a project in collaboration with the quartet class in the "Paganini" Conservatoire in Genoa. So, the teaching activities are taking its place in our career. However, we try to balance and manage our time to have enough time for practicing and performing together everyday.

What do you mostly emphasize to your students and why?

What we experienced from teaching quartet is that young students often see quartet playing as if a place where they need to compromise their individuality during the performance. We try to make the students understand that the group should share a common idea of what the result should be and not overpower the individuality of one’s approach to the music or other members of quartet, which it can destroy the music all together.

Do you have a practicing method you follow everyday as group?

There are few things that need to be executed daily, for example, intonation. Intonation is one area that every quartet must battle continuously! And there are methods to address such. As I mentioned earlier, what is important to us is coming together on the same idea of the character of a piece. This takes a great deal of time.

How do your quartet prepare on the day of performance?

In many cases, we arrive on the day of performance to the city we perform. Therefore, when possible, we plan to arrive in the hotel few hours early, rest a bit and be on the stage about two hours before the concert, so that we can get used to the hall’s acoustics.

How do you select repertoire for the concerts?

Most of the time, we propose a program or two. Sometimes, the promoters ask for specific work because their season often operates on a theme or the program we proposed may have been performed recently. As a full time string quartet performer, we like to propose variety of programs but we leave a room for flexibility to meet the publics demand. This is often how we expand our repertoire.

In your opinion, what is your strength as a quartet?

Based on the responses from the public, they feel that none of our member surpasses each other’s skill level but complement one another, which was our aim from the start. We have a leader when the music requires, however, we do not aim for overpowering any members within the ensemble. Another praise we hear is that we, as an ensemble, have a special way of communicating to the public. We really hope this praise is true because at the end of performance, the best and only musical expression we can accomplish is to convey our understanding of the music to the listeners. We never forget that we are the transmitter or translators of the work that stands between the composer and the public. For this matter, we strongly believe we give 110% of what we know during the process.

Do you individuals like any other forms of art? Tell us about it.

Of course! As a musician, we are all sensitive about the other forms of art. Simone and I are the ones who read the most during our long journeys (until the iPhone was invented!). Paolo is more tuned to the art that takes the shape of a beautiful car. Giovanni could be great friend of culinary arts. Nevertheless, I believe a good music allow us to come and join at the center of all arts.

In your opinion, what are the characteristics of a good performer and good chamber musicians?

The career of a performer and in particular of a chamber musician is not only shaped by collection of beautiful notes. There is a lot of travelling, planning and sometimes stressful. So I think what a performer should do is to keep fit technically, physically and mentally in order to face the challenges of career at its best. In an ensemble, you are always surrounded by the same members and this can potentially be a problem: for many group, career ends because they are not able to stay together for many reasons. In order to sustain the career as an ensemble, you must create a healthy environment in which you live and work because you are looking for a longtime working relationship. So I guess at the end, like in every job, all comes to talent and love of your job. Each one of these things should help to avoid potential problems and solve problems that may rise!