Armida Quartet is at the top of its game. The Strad, May 2022.
Winning the ARD International Competition in 2012 (also sweeping all other prizes including the audience prize) propelled the Armida Quartet on to the international concert platform. After concerts and radio recordings as BBC New Generation Artists (2014-16) and subsequently as ECHO Rising Stars (2016/17), the musicians have established themselves as regular guests in the best-known chamber music halls in Europe, Asia, and the USA.
In addition to regular appearances at European festivals such as the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Rheingau Musik Festival, the quartet has enjoyed great success at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, and London‘s Wigmore Hall, among others. Highlights of the 2022/23 season include appearances at Beethovenfest Bonn, Schubertiade Hohenems, Heidelberg String Quartet Festival and in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.
Acclaimed for their musical unity, which is evident in their fine-tuned sound and timing as well as their shared breaths, the musicians also emphasise their commitment to quartet playing with their choice of ensemble name: Armida refers to an opera by the composer Joseph Haydn, who is consi- dered the “father of the string quartet“. They studied with former members of the Artemis Quartet and with Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet); they owe further important impulses to Reinhard Goebel, Alfred Brendel, Marek Janowski, and Tabea Zimmermann.
The Armida Quartet places a special focus on the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The third album of the complete recordings of his string quartets for CAvi-music was described as ground- breaking for Mozart interpretation in the 21st century (Klassik Heute). Fono Forum recently praised the fine nuances in sound, dynamics and articulation, saying the recording (Vol. IV) set new stan- dards (March 2022).
The ensemble pursues its passion for Mozart, among other things, in its own concert series “Mozart Exploded“, in which each of the composer‘s string quartets are combined with masterpieces of contemporary music and occasionally presented in experimental concert for- mats in Berlin. The series has already been enthusiastically received in New York as well.
In addition, the young musicians have cooperated with G. Henle Verlag, for whom they act as musical advisors for the new Urtext edition of the Mozart quartets, including their own fingerings and bowings made available for the associated Henle Library App. In doing so, the quartet is not only at the forefront of the latest technological developments, but also advocates for closer collaboration between perfor- ming artists and musicologists.