Page 267 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 267
"How many are there in a string quartet?" comes the sudden question. Martin
answers spontaneously and with deep conviction: "Five!".
What a marvellous story, one we still like to tell ourselves today, always as if it were completely
new to us all. The stories we know and love are the most entertaining anyway. They catapult us
to the best moments in an instant.
It is actually rather obvious that there are often up to eight people in a "marriage of four". In a
sense, you always marry the partners of your fellow string quartet players. Without them
supporting the ensemble, there would be no career as a chamber music ensemble. Above all,
the full-time string quartet demands too much of its members as a way of life. Only if you manage
to maintain this symbiotic relationship for ten, or better still, for 15 years – that is, if you dedicate
yourself fully and completely to the ensemble and its development for more than a decade – will
the unique and unmistakable body of sound, the whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts,
emerge at some point. Anyone who has experienced such a form of musical creation, which is
superior to their own individual consciousness, will never it let go. Never again.
