Out Today: Takács Quartet’s 22nd album for Hyperion Records
continues to champion female composers and
features collaboration with pianist Marc-André Hamelin

New album showcases mid-century African American composer Florence Price,
whose Piano Quintet lay undiscovered for 50 years after her death

Takács Quartet currently celebrating 50th anniversary this season

The 22nd album from the Takács Quartet – out today on Hyperion Records – once again features pianist Marc-André Hamelin. This album of Piano Quintets features two piano quintets linked by American heritage; one by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition played by a major orchestra, and the other by Antonín Dvořák, whose residency in America during the 1890s made a profound impact in a country whose classical music life was developing rapidly. Dvořák’s piano quintet is acknowledged as the Bohemian composer’s most popular chamber work.

While the Dvořák has long been a staple of the chamber music repertoire, Price’s is a recent find, one of the composer’s manuscripts discovered as recently as 2009, some 70 years or so after it was written and more than 50 years after her death.

Florence Price struggled for recognition even after her award-winning Symphony in E minor of 1932. In fact, this very Piano Quintet was only discovered 50 years after her death, part of a major cache of unpublished manuscripts discovered in an Illinois attic. This has led to a major re-evaluation of her contribution across many genres of instrumental music.

The Quartet have long championed female composers from Fanny Mendelssohn and Amy Beach, with the Quartet’s album of Elgar & Beach Piano Quintets winning a 2020 Gramophone Award. In Autumn 2024, the Quartet kicked off their 50th Anniversary celebrations with a commission, recorded and issued by Hyperion Records, of Flow, a brand new work by Zimbabwean-Japanese composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama.

Across 2025, the Takács Quartet is marking its 50th anniversary year with a mix of commissions, recordings such as this, and worldwide touring across the USA as well as Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Hungary, and Switzerland.

Violinist Edward Dusinberre comments: “What unites the string quartets we have chosen for our fiftieth anniversary is a sense of daring and innovation. All of these pieces demonstrate the spark that ignites when the demands of individual expression on the one hand, and the goal of a unified interpretation on the other, are engaged with each other. Above all, it is this creative tension that makes quartet work so rewarding – in our fiftieth year, we have chosen music that vividly realizes this precarious yet magical equilibrium.”  

Takács Quartet U.S. Tour Dates

Saturday, April 5, 2025 / Lakewood, CO
LAKEWOOD CULTURAL CENTER

April 13 & 14, 2025 / Boulder, CO
CU PRESENTS, GRUSIN HALL BOULDER with Nicolò Spera, guitar

Thursday, April 24, 2025 / Ann Arbor, MI
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Saturday, April 26, 2025 / Santa Monica, CA
THE MAESTRO FOUNDATION with David Requiro, Cello

Tuesday, April 29, 2025 / Washington, DC
KENNEDY CENTER FORTAS CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERTS

Thursday, May 1, 2025 / New York, NY
FRICK COLLECTION CONCERTS

Friday, June 20, 2025 / Santa Barbara, CA
MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST

Friday, July 25, 2025 / Katonah, NY
CARAMOOR SUMMER FESTIVAL

Monday, July 28, 2025 / Bowdoin, ME
BOWDOIN INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

Thursday, July 31, 2025 / Aspen, CO
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL

About the Takács Quartet

Combining an international career with their longstanding appointments as Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, the members of the Takács perform throughout the world and are Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall. 

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gábor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gábor Ormai, and András Fejér. András Fejér remains as the founding member as the Quartet reaches its 50th Anniversary.

The Takács is noted for its innovative projects, which include the commissioning of Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No 1 Les Six rencontres and Flow by Nokuthula Ngwenyama, as well as recent quintets by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, written for the Takács and bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. The quartet has worked with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Roth, and Robert Pinsky in concerts that combined words and music. 

For Hyperion, the Takács Quartet has recorded 22 albums including works by Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Smetana, Haydn, Britten, Janáček, Shostakovich, Dvořák, Dohnányi, Elgar, Beach, Ravel, Dutilleux, Hough, and Coleridge-Taylor.

The ensemble’s 2020 Hyperion album of piano quintets by Amy Beach and Edward Elgar with pianist Garrick Ohlsson won a Gramophone Award. In 2021, the quartet’s recording of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn’s string quartets won a Presto Classical Recording of the Year award. In 2014, the Takács was awarded the prestigious Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone magazine chose the Takács as the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. 

About Marc-André Hamelin

“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries—in concert and on recordings—earning his place as a true icon of the piano. 

An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, Hamelin has released eighty-nine albums to date, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire.  

Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, most of which is published by Edition Peters, including his Études and Toccata on L’homme armé, the latter commissioned by the Van Cliburn Foundation. 

Born in Montréal, he is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award and over twenty quarterly awards from the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and has received seven Juno Awards, eleven Grammy nominations. In 2020, he was awarded the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry from the Ontario Arts Foundation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.