The harmonious string quartet - a balance of four personality types

It is remarkable that despite radical reforms and changes of personnel, string quartets can retain a unique identity or persona. In the Medici Quartet, of which I was a founder member and leader for nearly 35 years, we had two key changes: our original violist after ten years, and the second violinist ten years later. On both traumatic occasions, I vividly remember having the sense that the group was nonetheless still very much alive. It felt inevitable that someone would step into the breach and replace the absent voice.

Quartet connoisseur and regular Strad contributor Tully Potter articulates this well when he describes how after about ten years, quartets evoke a kind of virtual fifth member, a personification of that part of an ensemble greater than the sum of its parts.

Towards the end of the Medici's first decade, I remember becoming increasingly aware of this ghostly figure in our concerts - although I hasten to add I never actually saw him.