The violinist Hugh Maguire, who has died aged 86, used his apparently effortless technique not in concertos, but as a leader of top orchestras, as first violin of the Allegri Quartet, and then as a teacher, notably at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies at Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where a gentle manner disguised a profundity of musical thinking.
For example, perhaps your goal is to be selected as first violin in your orchestra, but in the past you've struggled to practice every day, in spite of making resolutions every New Year's Eve.
When the saxophone joins in an instrumental verse, it behaves almost as a second violin line.
Marriner said: "As a second violin I was quite a good partner but there was no comparison between us.
With the horn player Barry Tuckwell and clarinettist Gervase de Peyer, Neville (as principal second violin) was one of the new generation of players in the London Symphony Orchestra.
But he earned much of his living playing in London orchestras: he was in the Philharmonia when Arturo Toscanini came to conduct in 1952 and he joined the LSO in 1954 as principal second violin, a post he held until 1969.
First performance by the Kronos Quartet, the 12-minute piece begins with an alternating two-note drone in the cello, over which the first violin plays a searching melody, as the second violin tick-tocks a rhythmic riff and the viola's musings add textural thickness.
When the Moscow Philharmonic Quartet made its debut in 1945, its members – all students of Mikhail Terian, the violist of the Komitas Quartet – were Rostislav Dubinsky and Nina Barshai, Rudolf's first wife, as first and second violin, with Barshai the violist and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich – who left after only two weeks, to be replaced by Valentin Berlinsky, who remained for 60 years.
Janácek's music, instead, is more formless and exploratory, with broken utterances and strange effects (such as when the second violin and viola play on the bridge, creating a quiet screeching).
