Takács Quartet

The world-renowned Takács Quartet is now entering its 49^th season. Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about the 2023-2024 season that features varied projects including a new work written for them. Nokuthula Ngwenyama composed ‘Flow’, as an exploration and celebration of the natural world. The work was commissioned by nine concert presenters throughout the USA. July sees the release of a new recording of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák for Hyperion Records, while later in the season the quartet will release works by Schubert including his final quartet in G major. In 2024 the ensemble will perform and record piano quintets by Price and Dvořák with long-time chamber music partner Marc-Andre Hamelin.

As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Takács will perform four concerts featuring works by Hough, Price, Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven. During the season the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Berlin, Geneva, Linz, Innsbruck, Cambridge and St. Andrews. The Takács will appear at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Vancouver, Ann Arbor, Phoenix, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, Cleveland, Santa Fe and Stanford. The ensemble will perform two Bartók cycles at San Jose State University and Middlebury College and appear for the first time at the Virginia Arts Festival with pianist Olga Kern.

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For the 23-24 season the quartet enter into a partnership with El Sistema Colorado, working closely with its chamber music education program in Denver. During the summer months the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West, running an intensive quartet seminar.

In 2021 the Takács won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.

The Takács Quartet is known for its innovative programming. In 2021-22 the ensemble partnered with bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014 the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They have toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky, and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

In 2014 the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Members of the Takács Quartet are the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation.

The The Takács Quartet is proudly supported by The Turnovsky Trust

Performing in:

Grand Opening - Friday 2 February 7:30 pm

Takács and Friends - Wednesday 7 February 7:30 pm

The End of Time…and Beyond - Tuesday 6 February 7:30 pm

Songs and Dances - Sunday 4 February 1:00 pm

New Worlds - Saturday 3 February 7:30 pm

Gala Dinner - Thursday 1 February 6:00 pm

Romance - Monday 5 February 7:30 pm

See Full programme

Members:

Edward Dusinberre

As first violinist of the Takács Quartet, Edward Dusinberre has won a Grammy and awards from Gramophone Magazine, the Japanese Recording Academy, Chamber Music America and the Royal Philharmonic Society. Outside of the quartet he has made recordings of Beethoven’s violin sonatas No 9 (Kreutzer) and No 10 (Decca).

Edward is also an author. His second book, Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home, is published by Faber and University of Chicago Press in 2022. The book explores the themes of displacement and return in the lives and specific chamber works of Dvorák, Elgar, Bartók and Britten. His first book, Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet, takes the reader inside the life of a string quartet, melding music history and memoir as it explores the circumstances surrounding the composition of Beethoven’s quartets and the Takács Quartet’s experiences rehearsing and performing this music. The book won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2016 Creative Communication Award. Announcing the award the RPS Committee said: ‘Few have told so well of the musician’s life, or offered such illuminating insights to players and listeners alike’.Edward lives in Boulder, where he is Artist-in-Residence and a Christoffersen Fellow at the University of Colorado. In 2017 he was appointed a member of the faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Also performing separately in:

Harumi Rhodes

Harumi Rhodes is the second violinist of the Takács Quartet, performing 80 concerts a year worldwide. Acclaimed by The New York Times as a ‘deeply expressive violinist’, Harumi has gained recognition as a multi-faceted musician with a distinctive musical voice.

She is Associate Professor of Violin, Artist in Residence and Ralph E and Barbara L Christoffersen Faculty Fellow at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Harumi combines her performing career with a passionate commitment to guiding young instrumentalists, composers, and chamber ensembles.

Harumi has a vision for commissioning and programming contemporary music: her partnerships with composers of today have resulted in over 100 premieres. This season Clarice Assad wrote a three-movement suite for violin and piano Constelación that she recorded with Harumi for Yarlung Records. With composer Gabriela Lena Frank, Harumi co-directed the inaugural 2021-22 season of the Virtual Artist Partnership Program (VAPP). This collaboration between the Rhodes violin studio at CU-Boulder and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM) resulted in eight new solo works for violin. Jungyoon Wie composed a new violin duo Dan Poong for Harumi and Edward Dusinberre.

Recent concerto performances include Joseph Bologne Violin Concerto No 9 and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (with violist Richard O’Neill) with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra Colorado, as well as Florence Price Violin Concerto No. 2 with the West Texas Symphony.

As a member of the Takács Quartet, Harumi has shaped the Graduate String Quartet Residency at the University of Colorado. At the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, Rhodes leads an intensive summer string quartet seminar with the Takács Quartet. For the 23-24 season Rhodes is coordinating a partnership between Takács and El Sistema Colorado, working closely with its chamber music education program in Denver. Harumi serves as Artistic Director of the Denver/Boulder branch of “If Music Be The Food…”, a concert series designed to build partnerships through music in order to raise awareness for food insecurity in local communities.

Originally from New Jersey, Harumi was born into a family with Japanese, American, Russian and Romanian roots. After studying at the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory, she co-founded the Naumburg Award-winning ensemble Trio Cavatina, served as artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and performed extensively with Music from Copland House,

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Musicians from Marlboro.

Also performing separately in:

Romance - Monday 5 February 7:30 pm

Richard O’Neill

Newly appointed violist of the Takács Quartet, Richard O’Neill has distinguished himself as one of the great instrumentalists of his generation. An Emmy Award winner, two time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he has appeared as soloist with the world’s top orchestras including London, Los Angeles and Seoul philharmonics, the BBC, Hiroshima and Korean symphonies, the Kremerata Baltica, Moscow, Vienna and Wurtemburg chamber orchestras, and Alte Musik Koln, and has worked with distinguished musicians and conductors including Andrew Davis, Vladimir Jurowski, Francois Xavier Roth and Yannick Nezet-Seguin. An Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Principal Violist of Camerata Pacifica, for 13 seasons he served as Artistic Director of DITTO, his South Korean chamber music project, leading the ensemble on international tours to China and Japan and introducing tens of thousands to chamber music.

A Universal Music/Deutsche Grammophon recording artist, Richard has made ten solo albums and many other chamber music recordings, earning multiple platinum discs. Composers Lera Auerbach, Elliott Carter, Paul Chihara, John Harbison and Huang Ruo have written works for him. He has appeared on major TV networks in South Korea and enjoyed huge success with his 2004 KBS documentary ‘Human Theater’, which was viewed by over 12 million people, and his 2013 series ‘Hello?! Orchestra’, which featured his work with a multicultural youth orchestra for MBC and led to an International Emmy in Arts Programming and a feature length film.

Richard serves as Goodwill Ambassador for the Korean Red Cross, The Special Olympics, UNICEF and OXFAM and serves on the faculty of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.

Also performing separately in:

New Worlds - Saturday 3 February 7:30 pm

1919/2023 - Saturday 3 February 2:00 pm

András Fejér

András Fejér was born into a musical family. His father was a cellist and conductor, and his mother was a pianist. He began playing the cello at the age of seven, because as legend has it, his father was unwilling to listen to a violin-upstart practicing. Since an early age, his parents held string quartet weekends, which, for the young cellist were the most memorable of occasions, if not for the music, then for the glorious desserts his mother used to prepare for those sessions.

After attending a music high school, András was admitted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in 1975, where he was a pupil of Ede Banda, András Mihály, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág. That same year he founded the Takács String Quartet with three fellow classmates. Although the quartet has been his sole professional focus since then, he does occasionally perform as a soloist.