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The
disbandment of the Alban Berg Quartet was a serious loss to the
musical world. But in the arts, as elsewhere, nothing remains static:
the Mandelring Quartet had already demonstrated in their Schubert
recordings that they are ready and able to assume a preeminent
position as regards the art of the string quartet. These Shostakovich
recordings are proof that their excellence is not confined to the
traditional repertoire but extends into the modern age too.
Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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Winning a number of
prestigious competitions – in Munich (ARD), Evian and Reggio Emilia
(Premio Paolo Borciani) – has brought the Mandelring Quartet into
the world's great concert venues. In addition to numerous appearances
in Germany, the quartet's concert tours have taken it to European
musical centres that include Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels,
Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Paris and Vienna. Metropolises such as
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Montreal and Vancouver now feature in
its concert itineraries, as do tours of Central and South America, the
Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The
quartet has enjoyed success at the Rheingau Festival, the
Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, other festivals including
Lockenhaus, Montpellier, Montreal, the Engadiner Konzertwochen in
Switzerland and the Salzburg Festival.
The
Mandelring Quartet's artistic imprint is also very much in evidence in
the programmes of the HAMBACHERMusikFEST, founded in 1997 under
the quartet's artistic direction. This international chamber music
festival takes place every year in the celebrated castle at Hambach,
near Neustadt on Germany's Weinstrasse in a delightful setting amongst
the vineyards. The ensemble invites eminent soloists from Germany and
abroad and collaborates with them to put together varied programmes
using widely differing instrumental combinations.
Live
concerts and studio recordings by the Mandelring Quartet are broadcast
by the main German radio stations and by international broadcasters
including Belgian, Dutch and Swiss radio, Radio France and the BBC.
The
quartet's CD and SACD recordings, several of which have been awarded
the German Record Critics' Prize or been nominated for the Cannes
Classical Award, illustrate its outstanding quality and wide-ranging
repertoire. These recordings include a Schubert string quartet cycle
with each of his last three quartets paired with an earlier example,
chamber works by the French early romantic composer Georges Onslow,
and piano quintets by Brahms and Franck. The series "Brahms and
his Contemporaries" is devoted to the quartets of Brahms and less
well-known composers such as Friedrich Gernsheim and Heinrich von
Herzogenberg. In 2009 the Quartet have completed the recordings of the
15 string quartets by Shostakovich.
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