ALL but one of the Endellions have been together for 35 years, an astonishing innings. The new boy is second violinist Ralph de Souza who has clocked up a mere 28.

Longevity may not be everything, as England cricketers know. But Britain’s senior quartet, which has just enjoyed a five-day residency in Ryedale, proved that it is still riding exceptionally high. “Standard” fare of Haydn, Ravel and Beethoven was anything but in Pickering.

In the first of Haydn’s Op 76 set, the Endellions made life easy for their audience as one by one they stepped gently in and out of the first movement’s shifting spotlight. A seamless adagio and a wittily understated scherzo heralded the finale’s tormented triplets, resolving at last in the leader’s delicate filigree over plucked support.

Restraint was the key to the Endellion’s approach to Ravel’s only quartet, crystallized in a wonderfully perfumed slow movement, the strings hovering like bees intoxicated among sweet peas. Here, as elsewhere, Garfield Jackson’s viola was pivotal. The finale’s electric undercurrents, occasionally erupting, boiled into a stunning climax.

Beethoven’s First “Rasumovsky”, Op 59 No 1, sustained a light, smooth momentum until breaking loose in the scherzo, slipping back into an elegiac adagio, before turning teasingly playful at the close: the dazzling nonchalance of a world-class quartet at the top of its game.

In Hovingham, the quartet matched Wendy Cope’s poetry with wit and wisdom of their own, in Roxanna Panufnik’s parody The Audience.