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“…describing them as one of the world’s best string quartets is unavoidable. It’s a delight when such an esteemed ensemble (now based in Boulder, Colorado) not only measures up to but exceeds its reputation in performance. ”
The Guardian, May 20, 2023
The Takács Quartet, now beginning its 49th season, is “one of the world’s greatest string quartets” (The New York Times). The group consistently receives enthusiastic critical acclaim for its virtuosic performances, ingenious programming and unsurpassed recordings.
“These are both powerful, brilliantly imagined interpretations, painted in bold, rich colors and shaped with flashing virtuosity,” wrote Gramophone about the Quartet’s 2023 release of music by Hough, Dutilleux and Ravel, which earned five stars from BBC Music Magazine. Also in 2023, Scherzo magazine in Madrid wrote, “Even with personnel changes, the Takács Quartet remains one of the greatest chamber string ensembles we have on the world stage.”
The Takács Quartet has a large, varied and award-winning discography. In 2021, the Quartet won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For the ensemble’s CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.
For more information about the Takács Quartet, please visit their website.
2023-24 Season Highlights
Violinists Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, violist Richard O’Neill and cellist András Fejér (the remaining original member of the Quartet) embark on an exciting 2023-2024 season that features a variety of projects including a new work written for them by award-winning violist and composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama. The new composition, titled “Flow,” is a celebration of the natural world in the context of a rapidly changing climate. Ngwenyama writes in her program note:
We, as biological creatures, flow through life. Conversely, the flow of existence is temporarily housed in all living creatures each generation. Everything in nature flows and develops through time. Individual consciousness is a small part of all collectively lived experience. When the Takacs Quartet asked me to write them a piece about the natural world, I researched seasonal starling murmurations, black hole collisions, protein music (convertine protein sequences or genes to musical notes), Sars-Covid-2 Omicron and “Kraken” variants, peat fields as nature’s gift to carbon reclamation, and Madagascar lemur song and rhythms.
This work is the cornerstone of a program entitled “The Natural World,” with which the Quartet will perform on a national 13-city tour. The program opens with Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet and closes with Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet, which found its place on the program due to Czerny’s report that Beethoven had conceived the slow movement “while contemplating the starry sky and thinking of the music of the spheres.”
“The Natural World” tour includes a stop at each of the nine co-commissioning venues: Cal Performances; Portland Friends of Chamber Music; The Broad Stage; Shriver Hall Concert Series; Celebrity Series of Boston; the 92nd Street Y, New York; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Capital Region Classical; and UMS, University of Michigan.
This season also sees new recordings by the Takács Quartet. The Quartet just released a new recording of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák for Hyperion Records, while later in the season the quartet will release works by Schubert, including his final quartet in G major. In the spring of 2024 the ensemble will perform and record piano quintets by Price and Dvořák with long-time chamber music partner Marc-Andre Hamelin.
North American Tour: “The Natural World” with Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s “Flow”
November 12, 2023 / Berkeley, CA / Cal Performances (World Premiere of “Flow”)*
November 13 & 14, 2023 / Portland, OR / Portland Friends of Chamber Music*
November 17, 2023 / Santa Monica, CA / The Broad Stage*
November 19, 2023 / Baltimore, MD / Shriver Hall Concert Series*
February 11, 2024 / Beaver Creek, CO / Vilar Performing Arts Center
February 16, 2024 / Boston, MA / Celebrity Series of Boston*
March 13, 2024 / New York, NY / The 92nd Street Y, New York*
March 15, 2024 / Philadelphia, PA /Philadelphia Chamber Music Society*
March 17, 2024 / Schenectady, NY /Capital Region Classical at Union College Memorial Chapel*
March 22, 2024 / Scottsdale, AZ / Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts
March 26, 2024 / Buffalo, NY / Buffalo Chamber Music Society**
April 12, 2024 / Ann Arbor, MI / UMS, University of Michigan*
April 14, 2024 / Rochester, NY / Eastman School of Music
*Commissioning venue
**At the performance in Buffalo, Haydn’s Quartet is replaced by Wolf’s Italian Serenade for String Quartet