PCM: What is the process for selecting the quartets you perform?

Richard: It's a little bit of supply and demand. We have been around for thirty years. We are associated with the standard quartet repertoire. Even though we do play a fair number of new things and some things off the beaten path, still what we are best know for are the classics. Bartok, Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Haydn, Mozart of course, even though when we make the selections of the repertoire at the beginning of each season, we try to include something that is unusual. Most sponsors want the Vermeer for the standard stuff. If you want new music you hire the Kronos Quartet. If you want period music there are plenty of groups for that. The sponsors are very specific now with what they want. We're very pleased, music doesn't get better than that which we are obliged to play.

PCM: Does it bother you that you can't be experimental in your repertoire?

Richard: This is an example of what disturbs me. The Borodin Quartet is one of the great groups of our time, they have been around for over forty years. Because they are named after Borodin they are expected to play the 2^nd Borodin Quartet twenty times a season. I'd bee sick of it. If you get stereotyped to that degree as some groups do I can see how it would be a drag. I guess we're stereotyped but we're stereotyped across a wide swatch of the repertoire.

PCM: What is the practice routine for the band?

Richard: When we're on tour we don't rehearse as much as when we're not on tour. It's every day usually three hours a day from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. The rehearsals themselves are a combination of learning new music coming up and reviewing music we've been doing all along. It depends on what the calendar says as to what we focus on.

PCM: Do you have regular business meeting with the band?

Richard: No, but we should.

PCM: Do you have manager that just hands you a tour schedule?

Richard: The way it works for us is that we have a different manager for each country. I am the go between for America, Shmuel is the go between for Europe. It is organized in that extent. The managers or whomever we are dealing with come to one of us and we bring the information to the guys. We are very fussy in what will or won?t do. We will not accept many things as others groups will. If it means a schedule that is to difficult we won't. For example, we are doing all sixteen Beethoven quartets. We often do Beethoven cycles. We just will not do them all at once, we do them in six concerts and we need to have one or two nights off in between each pair of concerts. There are some quartets who will do them in one sitting to make an impression. We won't do that.

PCM: Is it a tour that brings you to Philadelphia 

Richard: It's just a run out, not a tour. The airlines changed that in America. It use to be that you could go out in America for three to four weeks and fly point to point and makes some money, well not "lose" money. Now you have to have a Saturday stay, you can't overlap the tickets the way we use too. You give away the entire fee to the airlines. In America we go out for one week at a time. Usually it is limited to a region. Philadelphia is a very important society, we know the presenter Tony Checchia for years and we play there often. They will call the manager and say we want the Vermeer and here are the dates that are good for us. Even if it means coming out for one concert we will because we love the series. They've chosen a good program.

PCM: It is estimated that seventy- five million have heard your recording The Seven Last Words of Christ.

Richard: With the recording and the various broadcast that's astounding, it's not so much because of us, it's not because of Haydn, it gives people a chance to tap into, whether they are religious or not, it gives them a chance to tap into that side of everybody that leads to a spiritual side. Also on the cd we did the cd with world class people, like Billy Graham, and Rev. Martin E. Marty, Father Raymond Brown and Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein. I produced the cd, the only way I could get these people involved was that I promised that I would produce it and have all the artistic control myself so the record company wouldn't have commercial vulnerability. This is the only thing you can go to a record store like Coconuts or Best Buy and hear a recording of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches. That's is what I am told. Classical music throughout history has always been white upper income audiences, unfortunately it seems to stay that way. It is amazing when we perform The Seven Last Words to see such a wide variety of people in the audience.

PCM: What were the contract negotiations like?

Richard: It was very hard, it took a lot of patience. It wasn't the money, everybody did it for free. They didn't want this to be linked to where there would be commercial profit, I had to form a non profit.

(Richard wrote a book about this project, it reached to number one hundred twenty-three on the Amazon list of best sellers. Echoes from Calvary, published by Roman & Littlefield.)

PCM: Who watches the dogs when you do these short tours?

Richard: That's a really good question. My wife is an environmental engineer and works for a pharmaceutical company and also travels with her job. She and I have to coordinate who's going to stay home. It doesn't often happen that we are away at the same time. When that happens we have we have friends watch them. We hate to board them. It is a problem, it's a logistical real life problem.

PCMS: Do we have to worry about a Yoko Ono coming into the band?

Richard: (laughter) There is no answer I could give to that, that wouldn't get me in trouble.