ELIAS STRING QUARTET

The Elias String Quartet is celebrated for its deep musical understanding and bold performances, which have earned the ensemble an international following and frequent tours across Europe and the US. Their ability to convey profound musical meaning, especially across entire quartet cycles, has made them a fixture in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals.

Since their rise to prominence as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists in 2009, the quartet has made Wigmore Hall a second home, having completed cycles there of Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. Their innovative Beethoven Project, in which they shared their research and insights on the composer’s complete string quartets online, demonstrated their commitment to both musical excellence and audience engagement, with performances at eleven different venues across the UK, including Wigmore Hall.

They are regular visitors to prestigious festivals around the world, with recent visits to Schubertiade, Rheingau Musik Festival and Bal y Gay Festival, and they perform in the world’s great chamber venues, including Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin Konzerthaus and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. They recently toured the US and Canada with a complete Beethoven quartet cycle, before taking it to Suntory Hall, Tokyo. This season’s highlights include a Mendelssohn programme at the Oslo Quartet Series and visits to Norwich Chamber Music and Turner Sims.

The players are keen advocates of contemporary music. Last season they gave the world premiere of Judith Bingham’s Clarinet Quintet at the Three Choirs Festival and have commissioned many works from composers such as Emily Howard, Sally Beamish, Colin Matthews and Timo Andres. They also enjoy collaborations with chamber music partners such as Leon Fleisher, Robert Plane, Michael Collins, Joan Rogers and Mark Padmore, and the, Jerusalem and Vertavo quartets.

As articulate representatives for classical music, the players are often invited to perform and discuss music on radio and have appeared on BBC TV’s Newsnight programme. They are committed to coaching the next generation of chamber musicians, teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music, where they themselves met and formed in 1998. They also studied at the Hochschule in Cologne with the Alban Berg Quartet. Other mentors included Peter Cropper, Hugh Maguire, György Kurtág, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Henri Dutilleux and Rainer Schmidt.

The Elias String Quartet’s discography includes Schumann and Dvořák piano quintets with Jonathan Biss (Onyx), French harp music with Sandrine Chatron (Ambroisie), Alexander Goehr’s Piano Quintet with Daniel Becker (Meridian), Britten quartets (Sonimage), Mendelssohn (ASV Gold) and the complete Beethoven quartets (Wigmore Hall Live).