The members of the Utrecht String Quartet do what they have done passionately for the last thirty years, play the most beautiful chamber music and dedicate their lives to this. They perform worldwide, and in major chamber music venues in the Netherlands where they are resident.
The quartet finds great joy in playing well-known works, well aware that the great composers wrote timeless masterpieces. However, the Utrecht String Quartet have also gained their excellent reputation because of their search for lost and forgotten repertoire and their collaboration with contemporary composers.
It is their mission to save composers from unjust oblivion, creating projects to make this happen. CD productions of music by Mossolov, Bosmans, Sweelinck, lesser known works of Britten, and the complete quartets of Glazunov, Verhulst, Gretchaninov, Lourié and Tchaikovsky are amongst the sizeable selection of recordings for MDG.
When preparing for a first performance Eeva (Finland), Katherine (Australia), Mikhail (Russia) and Sebastian (Germany) approach music as if it were an enigma which needs to be unravelled. “When we have new music in our hands we just can’t wait to try, understand, see and play with it, find tempos, harmonies, dynamics, discuss its intentions, listen to it, discover its possibilities and just learn.”
Their versatility has featured strongly in the quartet’s successful international tours which have taken them as far as Canada, USA, Australia, Finland, and Kazakhstan.
“Their performance is simultaneously intellectual, analytical, and strongly expressive” – Helsingin Sanomat, Finland.
The quartet teach as Quartet-in-Residence at Utrecht University of Arts, and regularly hold an International Chamber Music Masterclass in collaboration with the Utrecht University Summer School. They are also regular guests at the renowned Canadian Music Center CAMMAC.
“We want to share our passion and the art of playing chamber music with a younger generation.”
The Utrecht String Quartet has established a successful collaborative relationship with notable chamber musicians such as Severin von Eckardstein, Pieter Wispelwey, Paolo Giacometti, Ralph van Raat, Nobuko Imai, Paul Cassidy, Aleksander Madzer or baritone Thomas Oliemans.
The four musicians find each other in their deepest incentive to play chamber music, wanting to create a wonderful experience that will touch people in their hearts, taking a beautiful piece and its composer as a foundation. Their youthful bravura of the early years is now enriched by an awe of strong togetherness and understanding.
“It feels like coming home, whenever we find each other at a rehearsal or performance in between our other musical activities. We cherish being able to add our own individual voices to the whole, we have learned to understand each other without the need for many words.”
