Where's Takács?

continued

It's like this. When violinists Gabor Takács-Nagy and Károly Schranz, violist Gabor Ormai, and cellist András Fejér were students together at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, they started a string quartet. Because Takács-Nagy was first violinist, they named themselves the Takács Quartet. After a series of international tours and a string of recordings for the Hungarian Hungaroton label and the British Decca label, Takács-Nagy left in 1993, and English violinist Edward Dusinberre took the first violin chair. Then, when Gabor Ormai died in 1995, English violist Roger Tapping took his chair. Although the Takács was now based in London and had two English members, the players kept the by-then-world-renowned name.

After a decade of service and more but quite different recordings for Decca, Tapping left, and American violist Geraldine Walther took his chair. Since 2005, founding members Schranz and Fejér along with Dusinberre and Walther have been based in Boulder, where the Takács is quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado, and in 2006 they started making records for the British Hyperion label.

And where's Takács? Since 1997, Gabor Takács-Nagy has been professor of string quartet at the Conservatoire Supérieur in Geneva.