Making music against all the odds

NOTHING crosses boundaries like music, and nothing crops up in unlikelier places: who'd expect the war-torn, bandit-ridden capital of Albania to spawn a world-class string ensemble? Yet here come the Tirana Quartet, upsetting all predictions with a tour due to climax tomorrow at St James's, Piccadilly.

Bemused by culture-shock and anxiously scanning the papers for news of home, Anton, Arian, Aris-tidh and Hilda seem surprised to be asked this week about their quietly serious craft. They may not be refugees, but necessity has propelled them here no less inexorably: to boost their miserable salaries, and to contact the wider musical world.

If Albania seems culturally remote today, until eight years ago it was utterly cut off. "Do you realise," says Arian, "that under the Hoxha regime we were allowed to play nothing that had anything to do with religion?" The high point of his student career came when he played Bartok's viola concerto, but with a weird hiatus. He had been obliged to move straight from the first movement to the third, because the second was marked "Andante religioso". Under Enver Hoxha - who took his cue from Chairman Mao Bach and Handel were out. A conductor who had the temerity to stage Pergolesi's Stabat Mater was rewarded with seven years in prison. "Beethoven and Mozart were OK, provided we kept off their masses and requiems," says Hilda. "But music categorised as 'decadent' was also off the menu. So no Debussy, Ravel, or Stravinsky." The quartet have always made a point of playing music by their compatriots from both sides of the Albania-Kosovo border. The irony is that the Kosovar works in their repertoire are much more sophisticated than the Albanian ones. "While we were shut away," says Arian, "Kosovar musicians were able to plug into the European mainstream, and go to study in Germany. They often turned out to be wonderful composers." But not such good performers: standards at the Pristina Conservatory, he says, were not as high as those at the music academy in Tirana, where he is one of the professors. Visiting that academy recently, I met young players achieving miracles on beaten-up old instruments. "Only after 1990 did we know what a good instrument was," the rector, Bujar Sykja, told me. Few had ever played on one - many had never even heard one. Now they cannot afford one. The pianos are abominable: the only decent one - a gift from the German embassy remains locked except for special occasions. So Sykja asked me to pass on a plea to Britain's music colleges: rather than simply throwing out their used records, sheet music and instruments, could they throw them in the direction of Tirana? London's Royal College of Music is now about to respond with a lorry-load of desperately-needed material. The Tirana Quartet met in the opera-house orchestra, which is where Anton, Hilda and Aristidh still play, but where the haemorrhage of talent is turning into a flood. "The quartet has been our passion," says Aristidh, the cellist. "It has kept us together, and kept us true to our country. We regard it as an honour to represent Albanian culture abroad." Though with a little help from their friends: they're here thanks to a travel grant found by the music-loving British Ambassador to Tirana. ASKED what their ambition is five years hence, Arian gives a pathetically modest reply. "To still be together." But that, he adds, is by no means certain. On a salary of 100 US dollars per month they have families to feed, and political storm-clouds are gathering ever more thickly over their heads. Readers wanting to donate records, sheet music or instruments to the Tirana Academy should write to Bujar Sykja, c/o Arts Academy, Tirana, or fax him on 00 355 422 5488.

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