Hermann Voss

Violist Hermann Voss is a leading German chamber musician and a founding member of the long-established Melos Quartet Stuttgart. He and his young brother Gerhard, a violinist, were students at the conservatories in Düsseldorf and Freiberg and studied with Hungarian violinist Sandor Végh, one of the great chamber musicians of the twentieth century, who had founded both the Hungarian String Quartet and the Végh Quartet. Hermann entered a career as a solo violist and joined the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, becoming its principal violist in 1960. His brother Gerhard joined the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra. A fellow member of the Württemberg orchestra was Wilhelm Melcher, a rapidly rising young violinist (b. 1940). Melcher had already won the 1962 International Chamber Music Competition in Venice and in addition to his membership in Württemberg became concertmaster of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra in 1963. He interested Gerhard Voss and their colleague, cellist Peter Buck, in forming a string quartet. Gerhard suggested Hermann for membership, and the four founded the Melos Quartet Stuttgart in 1965. (The reference to Stuttgart is primarily to avoid confusion with the London-based Melos Ensemble, a twelve-member group founded in 1950.) The Melos Quartet Stuttgart had immediate success. They won an award at the Villa-Lobos String Quartet Competition in 1966 and in the same year won the Best Quartet prize at the Geneva International Competition, then were selected as West Germany's representative in the 1966 Jeunesses Musicales (Musical Youth) Festival in Paris. They gained the sponsorship of the Deutsches Musikleben foundation, launching their first tours. These were so successful that in 1967 the members all agreed to go full-time as a quartet and resign from their orchestral jobs. They soon gained a recording contract and by 1970 had released a series of the complete string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven. Since then the Melos Quartet Stuttgart has continued as one of the major touring and recording quartets of the world. It gives frequent master classes, and all of its members also teach. For recommended recordings please see the entry under Melos Quartet Stuttgart.