The Takács Quartet 2025 edition (l to r): Richard O’Neill (viola), András Fejér (cello), Harumi Rhodes (second violin), Edward Dusinberre (first violin). Photo: Amanda Tipton
When, in 1975, András Fejér formed the Takács String Quartet with fellow members of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, it didn't really occur to him it might still be going 50 years later.
Fejér is the one remaining original member of the quartet which is currently on a 50th anniversary tour.
He spoke to RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump from Australia ahead of the quartet's arrival in Aotearoa for three concerts in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland for Chamber Music New Zealand.
Fejér says when he and his three colleagues - Gábor Takács-Nagy (first violin), Károly Schranz (second violin), and Gábor Ormai (viola) - started the quartet, they weren't thinking about how long they'd stay together. The priority was making a "gorgeous" sound.
While audiences (and critics) loved the sound, the players themselves initially struggled to get on, frequently disagreeing over how best to play the music.
Fejér says those arguments could become quite heated, and the quartet didn't always make an effort to hide those tensions from the public.
Yet Fejér and his fellow Takács originals stuck together, perhaps partly for the same reason they disagreed so often: their dedication to the music they were playing, music by the likes of Beethoven, Hadyn, Mozart and Schubert.
They began to learn that egotism can be mistaken for artistic integrity, and to spot the difference.
The fact that Fejér is the last of the original Takács players is not because he burnt the other members off. The original line-up stayed together for almost 20 years, to the extent that in 1986 they all moved (with their families) from Hungary to Boulder, Colorado, in the USA.
The current quartet of Fejér, Edward Dusinberre (first violin), Harumi Rhodes (second violin), and Richard O’Neill (viola), has been together since 2020 and Fejér hopes the Takács Quartet carries on long after he retires.
