Summer is over. Autumn begins.

After an intense summer with exciting concerts at festivals in England, Scotland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands (including our Concertgebouw debut), we are now ready for the autumn, which begins with a concert at the Wigmore Hall. We are performing Haydn’s quartet op 64:5 and Schumann’s first quartet. The concert will be recorded for Wigmore Live. Welcome!

Read Donald’s blog on the Borletti-Buitoni website

Donald (our second violinist) has just published a blog on the Borletti-Buitoni website, describing the last few months of the quartet.

Read it here.

Good reviews for Britten CD

We have received good reviews for our new Britten CD:

Editor´s choice in Gramophone

Editor’s choice in Classic FM Magazine

The Strad recommends in The Strad

CD Review Disc of the week in BBC 3 CD Review (May 2010)

****  in BBC Music Magazine

****  in The Sunday Times

We have put some quotes from the reviews on the “reviews” page on our website.

Elias Quartet “Newcomer of the year 2010″

We can proudly reveal that we were selected “Newcomer of the year 2010″ by the BBC Music Magazine. Read more here, and watch the award ceremony from Kings Place, London, here.

New video clips published

Watch the recently published promotional material from the BBC 3 New Generation Artist scheme here and here.

New CD released

We have just released our latest CD with quartets by Benjamin Britten (No 2, 3 and the Divertimenti). We will post clips from some of the movements on this website as soon as possible!

Read more here

Elias Quartet recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Award

We can proudly report that we are the recipients of one of the Borletti-Buitoni Awards of 2010. The Borletti-Buitoni trust supports young artists in developing international careers. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the BBT trust!

Read more here.

Elias listed as one of five “leading young string quartets”

The Elias String Quartet was listed as one of the five “leading young string quartets” in the recent issue of Gramophone, together with the Pavel Haas Quartet, the Doric Quartet, the Jerusalem Quartet and Quatour Ebène. We are also featured on the cover CD, playing a movement from Mendelssohn’s op.80 quartet.

Elias String Quartet mailing list up and running

If you want regular updates from us about upcoming concerts and other news, please send an email to:

contact@eliasstringquartet.com

We will add you to the mailing list and stay in touch.

(If you want to contact us about a possible concert, please contact Ingpen & Williams at:

th@ingpen.co.uk )

Mendelssohn recording recommended by the BBC

We happily acknowledge that our recording of the op.80 Mendelssohn Quartet was chosen as best recording in a recent BBC Radio 3 Building A Library!

The Elias Quartet announced as BBC New Generation Artist

We can proudly report that we have been selected to join BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme!

The BBC writes on their web page:

“More than 70 international soloists and groups have been supported by the scheme since its inception 10 years ago, since which time it has provided some of the world’s best young musical talent with a wide-ranging programme of broadcast and performance opportunities over a two-year period.

Those artists joining the scheme from September are:

Khatia Buniatishvilli (piano – Georgia)
Francesco Piemontesi (piano – Italy)
Elias Quartet (UK)
Atos Trio (Germany)
Malin Christensson (soprano – Sweden)
Henk Neven (baritone – The Netherlands)”

The Australian adventure over…

After a fantastic tour, and an amazing week in Armidale coaching young australian chamber musicians, we have returned to Britain. We played concerts in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour and Hobart, in some truly spectacular venues. The schedule was intense, but the experience was incredibly rewarding thanks to the well-oiled organisation of Musica Viva, and the remarkable people working there.

In Armidale we met some young aspiring groups, many of which can look forward to a long professional career. They astounded us with their dedication and receptive attitude! We certainly learned at least as much as they did!

We will miss Australia and the incredible people we met there profoundly.

Wigmore Hall Live CD released

Our new CD has just been released. It was recorded live in the Wigmore Hall on the 29th of December last year in a concert where we performed Schubert´s Quartettsatz, Mozart´s “Dissonance” Quartet, and Mendelssohn´s extraordinary Quartet Op.44 No.2.  It has already received fine reviews!

Elias leaves Ensemble 360

After four amazing years we have decided to leave Ensemble 360 to be able to concentrate fully on the quartet. Through the arrangements of Music in the Round, we have been fortunate to be able to make music together with some of the finest young players in the world, and get to know an incredibly supportive audience.

We will staying for the full 2008-2009 season, and we hope to be able to come back to Sheffield often!

Alexander Goehr Piano Quintet Recording

Our disc of Alexander Goehr’s piano quintet has just been released for Meridian Records, with pianist Daniel Becker.

It’s a wonderful work which deserves to be better known and become part of the standard piano quintet repertoire! We’ve loved getting to know it and working on it with Mr. Goehr. Having him there during the recording could have been very stressful, whereas on the contrary, it was reassuring as he was such an encouraging presence and left us enormous scope for freedom in our interpretation of his music. We played the quintet last November at Mr. Goehr’s 75th birthday celebration concert in the Wigmore Hall. Also on the disc are his piano trio and his suite for violin and piano, with violinist Ning Kam and cellist Thomas Caroll.