How do members of a tring quartet keep from arguing? How do they stay togeter year after year? “Lurking behind the first question is an idealistic vision of a quartet as a non-stop idyll of glorious music-making with your friends, a working life as fulfilled and perfect as the Beethoven quartets we play. The implication of the second question is that this long and intense menage à quatre must be some sort of Strindbergian dance of death, endured by a species of subtle masochists. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between – although some groups veer towards one extreme or another, especially if they last for decades.”