Review of ‘Theme and Variations’
‘Theme and Variations – Cautionary tales of a 2nd Violin’ by Peter Markham
Having recently published my own book of memoirs – ‘A Singer’s Life’ (still available from Amazon!) – I was fascinated by this memoir by Peter Markham, for 23 years second violin in the renowned Edinburgh Quartet. We are two professional musicians, successful in our own specialities but not super famous, but with two life stories that are wildly different. I was extremely interested to find out about the life behind the scenes of a genre of music of which I am largely ignorant, playing no instrument and following a career path which involved much travelling but also long periods in the same place. The life of a string quartet player seems to have involved almost continual travelling, nearly always in the company of the same four members of the quartet.
The nearest equivalent to the string quartet is the small vocal ensemble, and I was privileged to see at close hand how the, eventually, four members of the Hilliard Ensemble worked and lived over a 20 year period, singing with them in Arvo Pärt’s ‘Passio’. The personal interactions of the Hilliard Ensemble were fascinating, and Peter Markham’s account of the Edinburgh Quartet resonated somewhat, although the animosities and acrimony revealed in the book were much more dramatic. In fact, I was amazed at the revelations Mr Markham gave us in the book, and I hope he has a good lawyer! The book was published in 2024, so I assume that all is well on that front. He is certainly extremely candid, which makes for a good read, and I found it all very interesting. He was not solely confined to the Quartet, and he tells us a lot about his career as an orchestral player in bands as varied as the Ulster Orchestra, The Bergen Symphony Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia, based in Newcastle, with whom I sang and recorded, although after his time. His life post-Quartet has been spent teaching, playing with the Scottish Ballet Orchestra, and latterly living and teaching in Hungary.
Mr Markham writes very well, and he has an excellent turn of phrase, which makes reading his book easy and entertaining. He has a barrow-load of anecdotes from his career, presumably mostly factual, although a slight over-obsession with bladder-related stories can tax the patience of the reader. It does represent, I think, a culture of drinking which I recognise from the early days of my career, but which will surprise many younger readers. He is quite clear that the drinking rarely happened before performances, but the after stories, and the travellers’ tales, are hair-raising.
I would like to have learned more about the preparation for performances, and a little more about the music, which I felt tended to get slightly lost in the tale-telling, but I suppose that might have made the book a bit less readable to the general public.
All in all, I think this is a most enjoyable book, and one which can be read by anyone interested in music, and with no direct knowledge of the subject, although that would help.
I have one minor grouse – Mr Markham goes on at some length about real ale and the joys thereof, a love I share to some extent, but his recollection of sipping, or even downing in numbers, pints of his beloved Deuchars IPA since the 1970s must be qualified by the fact that Deuchars IPA didn’t appear anywhere before 1991, when it was created in the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh. Before that he was probably drinking Belhaven Best, McEwan’s Heavy or, heaven preserve us, English beer!
However, it is a jolly good read, published by Thirsty Books of Edinburgh and Pittenweem, priced £20.
