SCOTLAND’S STRING QUARTET

The Edinburgh Quartet has long been celebrated as one of Britain’s foremost chamber ensembles, having appeared regularly at prestigious venues across the UK and toured extensively across Europe, the Far and Middle East, and North and South America.

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 and In Tune (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 the University of Stirling and 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 this 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 their annual tours around Scotland.

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 Edinburgh 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 Gál (Meridian), Kenneth Leighton (Meridian) and Mátyás Seiber (Delphian), as well as discs of Bartók, Robert Crawford, Haydn, Schubert and Thomas Wilson.

Their recent release “Postcard from Nalchik” featuring Haydn, Prokofiev and Shostakovich received a four star review in The Scotsman, with Ken Walton commending the playing as “perky and pristine in the Haydn, gutsy and attitudinal in the folk-inspired Prokofiev, movingly sustained in the grim delights of the Shostakovich… richly considered, rigorously balanced and, ultimately, a musical treat”.

Their new James MacMillan disc (also on Delphian) received 5 stars in The Scotsman from Walton, was described in The Herald by Michael Tumelty as “absolutely essential listening” and was praised by Gramophone Magazine: “These players have worked to produce the precise sound to transmit the emotional import of each phrase”.