Goldmund Quartet

Ensemble
Written By Ydeleine Berntsen

Goldmund Quartet

Ensemble

The Goldmund Quartet is managed in the Benelux by Ydeleine Berntsen

Contact:
E: ydeleine.berntsen@interartists.nl
T: +31 6 25 46 18 66

The Goldmund Quartet is known to feature “exquisite playing” and such “multi-layered homogeneity” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) in its interpretations of the great classical and modern works of the quartet literature. Its inwardness, the unbelievably fine intonation and the phrases worked out down to the smallest detail inspire audiences worldwide.

The Quartet is now counted amongst the leading string quartets of the younger generation worldwide which is reflected in their 2023/24 season calendar. Highlights include the Quartet’s debut at prestigious festivals such as Festival Dolomites, Settimane Musicali di Ascona and Viotti Festival in Vercelli, Italy. The ensemble will return to important halls such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam in a recital with pianist Fazil Say, to Tokyo Opera City as part of a tour of Japan as well as to the United States for a substantial tour to take in Boston and many others. Further return visits lead the Quartet to the renowned Hörtnagel series in Munich, Haus der Musik Innsbruck and Schwetzingen Festival.

In 2024-2025 the Goldmund quartett will tour in the US, with concerts in Montréal, Indianapolis and Memphis and tour in Japan on the occasion of the Nippon Foundation’s 50th anniversary. The ensemble will make its debut at the Schubertiade Hohenems and the HarzClassixFestival. Other debuts include performances on Cyprus and in Split, at the Teatro Liceu de Salamanca and in Florence in the series of the Amici della Musica Firenze. Returns will lead the Quartet to the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Oraniensteiner Konzerte and the Bodensee Festival.

The winners of the renowned 2018 International Wigmore Hall String Competition and the 2018 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition have been selected by the European Concert Hall Organisation as Rising Stars of the 2019/20 season. Since 2019, they have been performing Antonio Stradivari's Paganini Quartet, provided by the Nippon Music Foundation. In addition, the Quartet was awarded the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Music Prize in March 2020 and the Freiherr von Waltershausen Prize in December 2020. In 2016, the Quartet was already a winner of the Bavarian Arts Promotion Prize and the Karl Klinger Prize of the ARD Competition.

Following their 2020 release on Berlin Classics of Travel Diaries, the Quartet's third album with works by Wolfgang Rihm, Ana Sokolovic, Fazil Say and Dobrinka Tabakova, 2023 marks the release of two new important recordings. Enigma, published on Berlin Classic’s Neue Meister series as a limited vinyl release features contemporary works by Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Uno Helmersson alongside two newly commissioned pieces by Pascal Schumacher and Sophia Jani. The Death and the Maiden is a recording of works by Schubert, in the Quartet’s own words: “The eternal wanderer has fascinated and accompanied us since the beginning of our quartet life, his chamber music was among the first works we performed”.

Chamber music partners include artists such as Jörg Widmann, Ksenija Sidorova, Alexander Krichel, Alexey Stadler and Wies de Boevé, Nino Gvetadze, Noa Wildschut, Elisabeth Brauss, Maximilian Hornung, Frank Dupree, Simon Höfele

In addition to studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and with members of the Alban Berg Quartet, including Günter Pichler at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia and the Artemis Quartet in Berlin, master classes and studies with members of the Hagen, Borodin, Belcea, Ysaye and Cherubini Quartets, Ferenc Rados, Eberhard Feltz and Alfred Brendel gave the quartet important musical impulses.

The Goldmund Quartet members are Florian Schötz, Pinchas Adt (violins), Christoph Vandory (viola) and Raphael Paratore (cello).

Repertoire

The quartet's repertoire includes the iron repertoire, such as Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, Shostakovich, as well as contemporary composers like Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and Fazil Say. They regularly commission young, promising composers to write a work for the quartet.

Find out which programmes the Goldmund Quartet has selected for the 2025-2026 season

 
 

Reviews

“Sunday, Phillips Music presented the Munich-based Goldmund Quartet in the ballroom of Anderson House. These four young men, violinists Florian Schötz and Pinchas Adt, violist Christoph Vandory, and cellist Raphael Paratore, captured all hearts from the first measures of Haydn’s Quartet in G, Op 54, No 1, which fairly burst with intelligence and wit. Their to-the-manner-born ease with the rhetoric of Viennese classicism readily translated to the second of Beethoven’s ​‘Rasumovsky’ quartets in a performance that was well integrated, lean, and searingly intense.”
— Washington Post
“All the while, the musicians displayed impeccable intonation and a seemingly extrasensory connection with one another. Each played with exquisite clarity of tone in which every note could be parsed by the ear, but placed exactly where it needed to be in the mix.”
— Stir online Magazine
“The music of Shostakovich is always fascinating of course, hardly worth arguing about. But this recording by the Goldmund Quartet is in another realm. The incredible musicality of the four string players, their rhythmic precision and crystal clear intonation ensure that this CD is a real highlight. Highly recommended.”
— HR2-KULTUR
“Magnificent, brilliant, top-tier musical artistry - this is how the debut concert of the Goldmund Quartet in Mönchengladbach at the fourth Master Concert in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Halle can be summarized.”
— Rheinische Post
“Downright scary-good”
— KUSC Blog
“Absolute Mastery - The Goldmund Quartet Astonishes with Their Skills at the Prinzregententheater.”
— Süddeutsche Zeitung
Ydeleine Berntsen
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