WE sit at a low table, waiting for food to arrive. The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet has just given a lunchtime concert in University College Cork. When the soup comes, we unconsciously divide into two subgroups. Curiously, maybe even significantly, the group whose members eat the most food also do the most talking. I am to the fore among them, joined by the Vanbrugh's leader, Gregory Ellis, and cellist, Christopher Marwood. Both eating and speaking less are violinist Elizabeth Charleson and viola player Simon Aspell. They seem content to allow their colleagues do most of the talking, though intervening from time to time with telling remarks. It is a little difficult for me to imagine the intensity which characterises a string quartet in rehearsal; here the atmosphere is genuinely relaxed and convivial, laughter comes easily and frequently. On the train back to Dublin I decide that this has to do with dedication: to each other and to what they do. No wonder, then, that they are so good and so successful.

In early 1986, when British newspapers carried an advertisement for a quartet-in-residence at RTÉ, Ireland's national radio and TV station, the Vanbrugh Quartet had been together for only a few months. Little suspecting where it would end, they decided to apply and use the audition as an opportunity to perform in front of people. It came as something of a surprise to them when they survived the London auditions and were invited to the Dublin round where they ultimately triumphed, beating twenty other quartets from around the world. The RTÉ position and their new base on the south coast in Cork, Ireland's second city, provided the Vanbrughs with an opportunity to develop their art. This no doubt helped them in 1988 to win first prize in what is now the London International String Quartet Competition. Since then they have established their reputation as a leading international quartet. Their growing discography includes a recently-completed Beethoven cycle, works by the late Robert Simpson (Hyperion), Janácek and Dvorák (Collins), and Dohnányi and Moeran (ASV). The Vanbrughs have also recorded music by Irish composers John Kinsella, Ian Wilson, Walter Beckett and Brian Boydell on Chandos, and Frederick May and Aloys Fleischmann on Naxos/Marco Polo. Many of these CDs, currently totalling sixteen, have attracted impressive international acclaim.

As well as regarding Cork as a good base from which to work, the four players agree that it is a wonderful place to live. The quartet's involvement in Cork's music community began virtually the moment they arrived, when they gave their first lunchtime concerts in University College Cork (UCC). Since then, they have given more than three hundred recitals all over Ireland, both in regular concert series and in communities which have never hosted a string quartet before. As resident artists to the national radio station, their brief also includes regular broadcasts. In 1990, when major budgetary problems arose at RTÉ and the Vanbrughs' salaries were cut, UCC stepped into the breach inviting the quartet to become artists-in-residence to the university and making up the difference in their income.

Most recently, the quartet has been involved in founding and running the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, subject of constant, shameless plugging in our conversation. The plugging seems almost superfluous, however, owing to the Festival's outstanding success after only two years. The Vanbrugh is quartet-in-residence, with cellist Christopher Marwood as artistic director, and the Festival takes place in Bantry House, overlooking the spectacular scenery of Bantry Bay.

'The Festival has added to our sense of being here', says Marwood, 'to the relevance of having the quartet here'. This year's Festival (28 June to 5 July), whose guest artists include the Borodin String Quartet from Moscow, pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Joanna MacGregor and Hugh Tinney, and the Leopold String Trio from London, will offer Tavener, Simpson, Schnittke and Kurtág in the company of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. It will also feature the premiere of Irish composer Raymond Deane's String Quartet, specially commissioned by the Vanbrugh with funds provided by the Arts Council. Their commitment to performing not just contemporary music, but Irish contemporary music, is one of the things that comes across most emphatically in the course of our conversation. The Vanbrugh's repertoire of over one hundred works includes music by fifteen or so Irish composers, a very respectable percentage. In the Festival's first two years, they presented new works by Jane O'Leary and Ian Wilson. The Arts Council's New Music Commission scheme is great', says Marwood. 'It allowed us to commission Ian Wilson's Towards the Far Country for the 1997 Festival, and now the Deane for 1998.'

As an internationally-established ensemble, the Vanbrugh Quartet is uniquely positioned to promote the works of Irish composers. Despite this, the quartet declare themselves unqualified to comment in more than a general way about the global state of contemporary music. 'Although we programme contemporary works', says leader Gregory Ellis, 'and occasionally participate in contemporary festivals where the atmosphere is hopping, it's hard to judge -- beyond saying that we always get a good response'. Marwood points out that in some places there is a remarkable amount of money available for contemporary music, and viola player Simon Aspell cites the success of specialist quartets like the Kronos and Arditti as an indication of new music's healthy market. But since the Vanbrughs maintain a very wide repertoire, including works by non-Irish contemporary composers such as Robert Simpson, Michael Berkeley and others, and are at pains to avoid any specialist tag, they are more at home discussing new music in Ireland. 'We do find ourselves a little bit constricted with regard to non-Irish contemporary music because there's only a certain amount of new music we can do', Marwood explains. 'While there's a lot of stuff we would like to explore, we think that it's part of our responsibility to look at the Irish works first'.

Ellis concurs with Kevin Volans' opinion, expressed in these pages (New Music News, September 1997) that funding for new music is best directed towards performance. 'Too many works are played only once', he says, 'which isn't really in anyone's interest'. And while Volans was talking about providing a composer with the wherewithal to pay for performers and a venue, Ellis believes that money should be invested in contemporary music festivals.

Marwood's agreement is qualified. 'I sometimes wonder if contemporary music is actually better off within the context of other music. As it is, for example', he adds shamelessly, 'at the Bantry Festival'. A mixed diet is good, perhaps, for the broad, dedicated audience who nonetheless might not yet be ready to attend a more specialised festival? 'I think it's also partly a case of catching people at the right moment', Marwood continues. 'We've done some very adventurous works in Bantry which have gone down very well. The people are there for the music and the Festival puts them in the right mood. If you catch them at the right time, they can get into a contemporary work.'

Both specialist and non-specialist festivals, of course, are important and worthwhile. Subsidising promoters, according to Marwood, is another very pragmatic way of steering funding towards performance. 'If we are given a subsidy which we can offer to an international promoter so that they include a new Irish piece, that piece will get performed. This has already been happening indirectly through the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which has been very good at helping us when we've taken Irish works abroad'. 'We like to see ourselves as taking Irish music to the international market so that we can help it get known', says Ellis. 'We've got a crusade, if you like.' 'We've taken at least five or six Irish works abroad', adds Marwood. 'They have always gone down well.'

Apart from commissions, how does the Vanbrugh, with its near-monopoly on professional performances of new Irish music for string quartet, maintain its relationship with Irish composers? 'Unfortunately, we have a lot of scores which we haven't looked at yet', says Ellis. 'It's just not practical to do everything. And it's not fair on the composers, to half-promise them something and then not even look at the score. The best way for us is to commission works. And the Festival has proven a good vehicle for that. It gives a high profile to work we take up. Hopefully, down the line, it will be recorded. We don't want to spend a lot of time learning a work if we're only going to play it once -- as opposed to finding a work we really believe in, taking it on the international circuit, and then recording it.'

How difficult is it, I wonder, to find a work you really believe in, especially when there are four of you? 'Everyone has to agree', declares Ellis. 'If there's one person who doesn't agree, they can't just be over-ruled. If one person says, I really hate playing this, then I don't think we could play it.' It is a course of action to which they have never had to resort. 'We do try and give a piece a fair chance', says Marwood. 'Of course, sometimes we feel we've had enough of something, even a good work. Perhaps something we've played a lot'. 'Or if you're playing a work which requires a tremendous amount of stamina', says violinist Elizabeth Charleson. 'It can be difficult to fit it into a programme or to take it on tour. So we give it a rest because it's knackering us to play it.' Marwood has a piece in mind: 'Bob Simpson's Fourteenth would fall into that category!' So has Aspell: 'That's the piece I was thinking of!' After earnest universal expressions of how good a piece it in fact is, and how much they all love it, Charleson continues, 'It's a piece which requires an awful lot of concentration and a lot of hard work.'

The Vanbrugh's association with Robert Simpson, who died late last year aged 76, goes all the way back to 1986 when he arrived in Ireland at the same time they did. 'We did his Quartet No. 7 in UCC', recalls Marwood. 'He came along to say a few words about it. He was incredibly down-to-earth, straightforward, frank, honest. And his music is the same: never highfalutin, always direct. His big thing is the structure of his music which is phenomenal. We found you could do too much to it and destroy the shape of it. It's great stuff.' The Vanbrughs will perform Simpson's Quartet No. 15 in Bantry this summer.

More food arrives, after which we return to the matter of selecting and assimilating new works, both contemporary and otherwise. 'We've never abandoned a piece', Ellis assures me. 'Yes we have', corrects Marwood, 'once.' 'Yes', concedes Ellis. 'And the composer will remain nameless.' 'He wasn't an Irish composer.' 'You usually know fairly soon if it's going to be practical or not', says Ellis.

For Simon Aspell, it is a matter of giving a work time. 'With contemporary music we sometimes complain about finding how to play the thing in the first instance, to put the thing together for the first few times. It's quite a struggle knocking it into shape. But once it is knocked into shape, it's amazing how you get carried away with the whole thing. At the end of the day, we don't make a judgement about a piece until we've played it half a dozen times in performance.' This sounds alarmingly binding until Charleson furnishes the necessary escape clause. 'But a score that's just sent to us we might judge after playing it through once.'

According to Marwood, struggling with a score is not something confined exclusively to new music. 'We're working on Bartók Four at the moment, and we're all complaining bitterly! But in this case we know that it's a great piece. It's a matter of getting there. The actual process of learning something is sometimes quite frustrating, quite annoying. You know what you want it to sound like, but it doesn't quite sound like that yet. Just getting through that barrier until you're into the music makes a huge difference in your perception of the piece. Condemning a piece because it feels uncomfortable isn't very fair to the piece.'

We discuss international style, noting how May, Boydell and Fleischmann were keen to explore it before the War, and also whatever it is that makes a piece of music distinctly Irish. We eventually conclude that such labels are ultimately hazardous, though not before the Vanbrughs have made some interesting observations. For example Boydell, who particularly and self-consciously sought a more European, non-Celtic musical voice, sounds Irish. 'Despite his protestations to the contrary', argues Ellis, 'he has Irishness. Also May. Boydell said that you are a product of your country or society, what you've done, all the influences on your life. This is going to come through somewhat. Listening to John Kinsella's work, I would say it sounds as though it's from this part of the world.'

'When May and Boydell were composing, before the War, the world was a much smaller place', adds Charleson. 'Nowadays you can't help but be influenced by what's going on everywhere.' She mentions the Nordic landscapes easily imagined while listening to Sibelius, and then wonders what parallels, if any, there might be in the music of, for example, Ian Wilson or Donnacha Dennehy. There is some laughter. 'Goodness knows what sort of landscape Donnacha Dennehy was brought up in', smiles Marwood. 'He spent time in Chicago, didn't he?' offers Ellis.

Last November the quartet premiered the young Dennehy's first quartet, Pluck, Stroke and Hammer, an Arts Council commission, and performed it around Ireland on a Music Network tour. The slightly mocking tone is an affectionate one: the composers of music they don't like have remained strictly anonymous throughout. 'I said to him, after the tour', continues Ellis, 'that now he ought to write the other three movements.' Charleson continues. 'The reason I really like the piece is because there is something personal about it. When we talk of international flavour, that's when people can lose that personal atmosphere. It's a mark of a good composer when they've found their own voice, whether it's international or localised.' 'If, as Boydell says, we're influenced by society', continues Marwood, 'well, that society is very much bigger now than it was in the past. That's why, in the end, it's the personal thing that matters.' 'Donnacha's music is unabashed, not self-conscious', says Ellis. 'He just writes and it's good. It works.'

In all they've said, the members of the Vanbrugh Quartet have communicated dedication: to their art and ensemble, to music and to Irish composers. And as the scores continue to flood in from the hopefuls, and as disappointment must invariably come for many, for those whose work is taken up and performed the Vanbrughs offer this considerable assurance: 'When you're performing', says Ellis, 'you want to feel that it's a success, that you have moved people in one way or another. But even when an audience doesn't react, if the quartet feels that the piece is great to do, that's there's something amazing about it, then we keep playing it.'