Belcea Quartet
Corina Belcea-Fisher, violinLaura Samuel, violin
Krzysztof Chorzelski, viola
Antoine Lederlin, cello
The Belcea Quartet has gained an enviable reputation as one of the leading quartets of the new generation. They continue to take the British and international chamber music circuit by storm, consistently receiving critical acclaim for their performances. Established at the Royal College of Music in 1994, the quartet was initially coached by the Chilingirian Quartet, Simon Rowland-Jones, and the Amadeus Quartet. From 1997 to 2000, they were represented by Young Concert Artists Trust in London, during which time they were coached by the Alban Berg Quartet, won first prize at both the Osaka and Bordeaux International String Quartet Competitions in 1999 and represented Great Britain in the European Concert Halls Organization "Rising Stars" series for the 1999/2000 season.
From 1999 to 2001 the Belcea Quartet was one of the selected artists for the BBC Radio 3 "New Generations" scheme and received the Chamber Music Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society in both 2001 and 2003. They are the Associate Ensemble at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where they also hold a teaching position.
The Belcea Quartet has an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics and won the Gramophone Award for best debut recording in 2001. Subsequent recordings include works by Schubert, Brahms, Fauré's La Bonne Chanson with Ian Bostridge, a double disc of Britten's string quartets, and most recently Mozart's "Dissonance" and "Hoffmeister" quartets. Their future recording releases include the complete Bartók quartets.
Since collaborating with Yvonne Kenny, Mark Padmore, and London Winds for The Turn of the Screw at the Cheltenham Festival in 2004, the Belcea Quartet has performed alongside some of today's most renowned vocalists, including Lisa Milne, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Angelika Kirchschlager. Their international engagements take them to such concert halls as the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Brussels' Palais des Beaux Arts, New York's Carnegie Hall and the Châtelet in Paris, as well as festivals in Istanbul, Lausanne, Salzburg, and Mecklenburg. In the UK they regularly appear at the Bath, Petworth, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, Perth, and Edinburgh festivals and at Wigmore Hall where they were the resident quartet from 2001-06.
The Belcea Quartet is supported by Rosalind and Brian Gilmore and the Royal College of Music's New Generation Scheme.
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