Perhaps it’s force of habit, perhaps they’re simply trying to help identification, but as the members of the Takács Quartet sit down to be interviewed, they arrange themselves exactly as if they were about to give a performance. And indeed as the interview progresses, each member takes his part just as he would with his instrument: violinist Edward Dusinberre clearly leads. Károly Schranz, the other violinist, is less prominent, but his contributions have a sardonic wit. Viola player Roger Tapping provides a ready expansion of Dusinberre’s lines while cellist András Fejér offers a subdued, thoughtful counterpoint.

The Takács were formed in 1975, and there have been only two changes in personnel: Gábor Takacs-Nagy left in 1993, apparently because of the quartet’s punishing schedule which runs to some 90 concerts a year, two residencies (at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and at the Guildhall School in London) and, of course, recordings. Then in 1994, viola player Gábor Ormai died at the tragically early age of 40. These two were replaced by, respectively, Dusinberre and Tapping.

After 18 years as a Hungarian quartet, the Takács are now more broadly European. We love to think of music in terms of this or that nationalism, and I speculate if the changes affect the nature of the group, and its style. Károly Schranz thinks not. ‘The original quartet existed for many years, and we changed our style many times. I think it’s the same for all quartets. That’s one reason that it wasn’t difficult to take on new members; we were flexible.’ As Roger Tapping suggests: ‘A group would obviously choose a new member who isn’t going to have a totally different approach, and as the new member, I was very aware that I was joining something that already existed.’

Edward Dusinberre expands on the point. ‘When I joined, I was aware of a particular quality in the other players, which I felt I needed to emulate: an ability to play from the gut, if that’s not a cliché. The rehearsal process is really about making everything more conscious: you talk about dynamics, phrasing, structure. And I sensed that this group had a tremendous ability, having done that, to forget all about it, and play from a deep, unconscious level. That was an important thing to take on, but I don’t think you would draw national boundaries around it. That’s a quality of any good musician.’

Nor, in Dusinberre’s view, do the Takács emphasize style as such. ‘That’s a word you have to be very careful about using. It can have superficial connotations, when the most important things to do with playing don’t have to do with ‘style’. They’re to do with approach, with instinct, the way you interact; and perhaps style comes out of that. It’s for other people to say whether we have a particular style. We don’t think about it very much.’

The group’s discography embraces Schubert, Haydn, Brahms, Mozart and recording plans include complete cycles of Bartók and Beethoven quartets. Although the Takács’ concert repertoire includes the Third Quartet of Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng, new music doesn’t figure prominently in the group’s history, despite the fact that contemporary composers are clearly attracted to the string quartet medium. When I asked why contemporary music does not occupy more of their time, Károly Schranz suggested, with a glint of malicious glee, ‘We don’t want to take the bread from the mouths of Kronos!’

Dusinberre snorts. ‘I don’t think there’s too much danger of that!’ and goes on, ‘If you do too much new music, you don’t have time to make the piece your own. Of course you can get up on stage and get through it, play the notes, be together. But it takes time to absorb it so that you can really make a personal statement in the way that you can with other music. Nevertheless it’s important to have one or two new projects, which we choose carefully: Michael Berkeley is writing something for us to play in 1997, for example.’

In the meantime, the quartet’s latest CD combines Smetana’s First String Quartet (From my life) with Borodin’s Second, ‘a bit of a departure for Decca,’ suggests Dusinberre, ‘because the Takács have rarely combined different composers on one release before. So this marks a bit of an experimental stage for us, to see how one composer’s work reflects off another. Putting them together didn’t feel like gilding the lily because the two pieces are very different. Besides, we didn’t think there was much point in recording Smetana’s other quartet, when the First seems to say everything about the composer and his work.’ 

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