A friend of mine, a member of a successful string quartet, once remarked to me that classical music's best-kept secret is how often the members of a chamber group grow to hate one another.

Over the years I've repeated this remark to a number of non-musicians and they've all been shocked. They've seen films and read novels based on the notion that chamber music is one big group hug – or if not exactly a group hug, then at any rate an opportunity to put forward your best self. Isn't chamber music a metaphor for an ideal society, everyone listening and sharing respectfully, putting their skills and understanding at the service of the whole group? Doesn't it give you the magical combination of independence without isolation? How can it be that people voluntarily engaged in the delightful pursuit of shared and intimate music-making, playing the divine quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, are anything other than friends? Chamber music at its most positive is a musical experience perhaps more touching than any other. So many works of chamber music feel as if they have been offered as insights into their composers' innermost thoughts. You feel privileged to hear such confidences, and to transmit them securely is a big but pleasing responsibility.