The Edinburgh Quartet
The Edinburgh Quartet was founded in 1960 and quickly became established as one of Britain’s foremost chamber ensembles, appearing regularly at prestigious venues across the country including London’s Wigmore Hall and The South Bank Centre. It achieved international recognition after winning the Contemporary Prize at the Evian-les-Bains String Quartet Competition and has since toured extensively across Europe, the Far East, North and South America and the Middle East.
In addition to a busy concert schedule the Edinburgh Quartet is frequently featured in radio broadcasts for the BBC and other stations. Recently this has included live appearances on Classics Unwrapped (BBC Radio Scotland) and Jazz Line-Up (BBC Radio 3) as well as video recordings for Studio One Sessions, which appear on the BBC Radio Scotland website.
The Edinburgh Quartet is committed to nurturing talent and is resident at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Aberdeen. The Quartet is about to embark on a new residency at the University of Stirling and it continues to maintain a strong association with the University of Edinburgh. As well as giving a regular classical concert series at each of these institutions, the players work with composition students, instrumentalists and student teachers. In addition to working with university students the Edinburgh Quartet’s outreach programme encompasses workshops for primary and secondary school children and tutoring adults on the Variations Summer School in Ullapool and an annual Spring Chamber Music Course in Linlithgow.
The Quartet has always been a champion of new music and has worked with many important and prolific composers of our age including James MacMillan, Michael Tippett and Howard Blake.
The Quartet has an extensive discography available on various labels such as Delphian, Linn, Meridian and RCA. Among their recordings are the complete string quartets of Hans Gal (Meridian), Kenneth Leighton (Meridian) and Mátyás Seiber (Delphian), as well as discs of Bartók, Robert Crawford, Haydn, Schubert and Thomas Wilson. Forthcoming releases include a “Russian”- themed CD of Haydn, Prokofiev and Shostakovich and a James MacMillan disc, both on Delphian.
