BELCEA STRING QUARTET

TUESDAY, APRIL 8
Houston Friends of Music
Belcea Quartet
Program: Haydn - String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20 No. 4; Britten - String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94; and Mozart - String Quartet in D Major, K. 499 “Hoffmeister.”
8:00 p.m., Stude Concert Hall
Admission (reserved seating): $19–$61.
For tickets call 713-348-5400.
Limited number of complimentary tickets for Rice faculty, staff, and students.

The Belcea Quartet has gained an enviable reputation as one of the leading quartets of the new generation. They continue to take the British and international chamber music circuit by storm, consistently receiving critical acclaim for their performances. The Quartet was established at the Royal College Music in 1994, where they were coached by the Chilingirian Quartet, Simon Rowland-Jones and the Amadeus Quartet. From 1997 to 2000, they were represented by Young Concert Artists Trust in London, during which time they were coached by the Alban Berg Quartet, won first prize at both the Osaka and Bordeaux International String Quartet Competitions in 1999 and represented Great Britain in the European Concert Halls Organisation “Rising Stars” series for the 1999/2000 season. From 1999 to 2001 the Belcea Quartet was one of the selected artists for the BBC Radio 3 “New Generations” scheme and they received the Chamber Music Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society in both 2001 and 2003. They are the Associate Ensemble at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where they also hold a teaching position.

The Belcea Quartet has an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics and won the Gramophone Award for best debut recording in 2001. Subsequent recordings for EMI include Schubert quartets, Brahms’ String Quartet Op. 51 No. 1 and second string quintet with Thomas Kakuska, Fauré La Bonne Chanson with Ian Bostridge, Schubert’s Trout Quintet with Thomas Ades and Corin Long, a double disc of Britten’s string quartets and most recently Mozart’s “Dissonance” and “Hoffmeister” quartets. Their future recording releases include the complete Bartok quartets.

Since collaborating with Yvonne Kenny, Mark Padmore and London Winds for The Turn of the Screw at the Cheltenham Festival in July 2004, their growing collaboration with singers includes: Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Ann Murray and Simon Keenlyside at Wigmore Hall; Schoenberg’s 2nd String Quartet and a new commission by Joseph Phibbs for string quartet and voice with Lisa Milne at Wigmore Hall; Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson with Anne Sofie von Otter at the Cité de la Musique, Paris and with Ian Bostridge at New York’s Zankel Hall and Washington’s Library of Congress; Respighi’s Il Tramonto with Angelika Kirchschlager at the Langeland Festival.

The Belcea Quartet’s international engagements take them to the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ Palais des Beaux Arts, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Stockholm’s Konzerthuset, New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Chatelet in Paris and to festivals including Luberon, Istanbul, Trondheim, Lausanne, Salzburg, Mecklenburg, and the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade. In the UK they regularly appear at the Bath, Petworth, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, Perth and Edinburgh festivals and at Wigmore Hall where they were resident Quartet from 2001 to 2006. They regularly work with leading instrumentalists including Thomas Ades, Isabelle van Keulen, Michael Collins, Imogen Cooper, Piotr Anderszewski, Valentin Erbin and Natalie Clein.

The Belcea Quartet is supported by Rosalind and Brian Gilmore and the Royal College of Music’s New Generation Scheme.