Radio Reaction: Elvis Costello’s classical crossover
Elvis Costello and The Brodsky Quartet – The Juliet Letters, 1993
Nowadays a collaboration between a rockstar and a string quartet isn’t novel, but in 1993, an era rather dubious crossovers (a “junkyard,” according to Costello himself), what were audiences to make of it? “It’s a little bit different. It’s not a rock opera. It’s a new thing”, said Costello.
He witnessed the Brodsky Quartet in London playing Dmitri Shostakovich’s complete string quartets – it’s hard to imagine a more powerful set of musical statements for two violins, viola, cello – and felt a collaboration had to happen.
And it was indeed a collaboration, not just a flighty dalliance from a rockstar. The starting point was a bizarre news story about a professor in Verona writing replies to a certain Juliet Capulet. After many conversations and drafts, with Costello acting as editor, music and text came together, authored by Costello and the Brodskys. Together they composed imaginary love letters, suicide notes, fragments of graffiti, and even junk mail, and the resulting twenty ballads telling of love, betrayal and death, pack a real punch.
The music is gnarly, with undercurrents of Franz Schubert, Kurt Weill and Alban Berg, not to mention Shostakovich. It’s a rough and immediate sound, but every so often you’re caught with a curl of lyricism.
Costello’s unpolished, unfussy, and frankly unmusical singing makes for brilliant moments of raw story-telling, like in “Taking My Life In Your Hands”, and one can sense the quartet really starting to unbutton and enjoy themselves in “Jackson, Monk and Rowe”, or when Costello strains at the edge of his range, like in “Expert Rites”. It’s such fun to listen to, and full of wonderfully swinish moments.