Melos Quartet - Origins and Activities

Origins and Activities

The Melos Quartet Stuttgart was founded in October 1965 by four young musicians who were members of well-known German chamber orchestras. The name Melos, an ancient Greek word for music which is the root of the word melody, was suggested by the combination of the names Melcher and Voss, to indicate their purpose as distinct individuals seeking musical harmony together.

The leader, Wilhelm Melcher of Hamburg (1940–2005), studied with Erich Röhn, and with Pina Carmirelli and Arrigo Pelliccia of the Boccherini Quintet, in Rome. He won the International Chamber Music Competition at Venice in 1962, and became concertmaster of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra from 1963. The two Voss brothers, Gerhard (b. 1939) and Hermann (b. 1934), are Rhinelanders: they studied with Sandor Végh, and Hermann continued as a pupil of Ulrich Koch's. He became solo violist of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The cellist Peter Buck (b. 1937) is Swabian and studied at Düsseldorf and in Freiburg, and with Ludwig Hoelscher in Stuttgart. Gerhard Voss and Peter Buck were both members of the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra.

In 1966 the group gave its first recital: won a prize in the Villa-Lobos-Quartet competition at Rio de Janeiro: represented West Germany at the World Congress of Jeuness Musicale in Paris; and, most influentially for their future success, won the 'Prix Américain' as the best quartet, at the Geneva International Congress of Musical Performance. Then, giving up their orchestral positions to concentrate solely on the Quartet, they began touring in 1967 and in 1968 performed in seven European countries. In 1969 they gave 105 concerts throughout the world, and had their first television appearance.

In 1969 the group signed a five-year contract with the D.G.G. record company, and spent 25 days that year making recordings for radio and commercial release. They obtained the first prize of the String Quartet Foundation sponsored by German industry in 1970, and in 1972 they entered into a further contract with D.G.G. for complete recordings of the Schubert and Cherubini string quartets.

After this they undertook tours around the world, in North and South America, Africa, all European countries, the Near East and Far East, getting as far as Novosibirsk in Russia. They became the first West German musicians to play in Volgograd (Stalingrad), in 1973, in concerts commemorating the events of 1943. By 1975, when the Schubert integral recordings were completed and issued, the Quartet also held a teaching post at the Stuttgart School of Music.

By 1975 the group had built up a repertoire of 120 works, including the complete Beethoven, Schubert, Cherubini and Bartok quartets, and works by Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Pfitzner, Verdi, Donizetti, Debussy, Smetana, Kodály, Janáček, Hindemith, Alban Berg, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Witold Lutosławski, Milko Kelemen, Wittinger and Horvath. They made a conscious decision to have a wide-ranging repertoire in order to avoid getting stuck to any particular period.

For most of the Schubert recordings the instruments were a cello by Francesco Ruggieri (1682), a viola by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi (18th century), first violin by Domenico Montagnana (1731) and second violin by Carlo Annibale Tononi (18th century).

They were planning a farewell tour in 2005, when Wilhelm Melcher, the first violinist died unexpectedly just before his 65th birthday.

Among others, the Quartet collaborated with Arthur Rubinstein, Mstislav Rostropovich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.