The festive fifth edition of the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam kicks off with grandiose musicians and brilliant repertoire. When Haydn heard Mozart’s Nineteenth String Quartet, he judged that his colleague was ‘in all honesty the greatest composer of them all’ – the lightly rubbing opening bars did nothing to change that. Whether Brett Dean uses more dissonance than Mozart we do not yet know. What is certain is that the Belcea Quartet is as well versed in the Viennese Classics as it is in new works.

In his moving Fourth String Quintet, Mozart explores regions he had not visited before. The quintet, in the serious key of g minor, is a highlight of Mozart’s oeuvre. None other than Tabea Zimmermann joins the Belcea Quartet with her glowing viola sound for a performance of this deeply emotional work.

*Co-commission with Carnegie Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, Kölner Philharmonie, Biennale de quatuors à cordes and Ukaria Cultural Centre

‘Donkeys they are!’ shouted Beethoven. He had just learned that the premiere audience had had two short movements from his Thirteenth String Quartet repeated, and not the concluding Grosse Fuge. Yet the listeners were not entirely wrong: with this piece, Beethoven was ahead of his time. A deeper understanding emerged only at the time when Stravinsky noted: ‘The Grosse Fuge is a contemporary piece and will always remain contemporary.’ The work is now part of the absolute canon of the string quartet repertoire and will today be played by the Spanish Cuarteto Casals.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.

For Bach, as for Maurits Cornelis Escher, rules of form were a challenge to create pure beauty. Just as the graphic artist effortlessly turned birds into fish and etched waterfalls without end, Bach performed miracles within the most difficult musical genre, the fugue. Die Kunst der Fuge became one of Bach’s unique highlights, as well as his swan song: he died while writing the last fugue.

Bach wrote his magnum opus on fugue as an abstract work: Die Kunst der Fuge has no instrumentation designation. Cuarteto Casals took up the challenge, performed the work many times and recorded the full series of canons, single, double, triple, counter and mirror fugues. The members found their inspiration in their quartet’s namesake, Pablo Casals, who was the first cellist to show the world the beauty of Bach’s Suites for solo cello.

An unprecedented luxury: listening to Beethoven by two quartets in one afternoon in a veritable mini marathon. The Belcea Quartet and Quatuor Ébène know each other well and value each other as partners. They selected masterpieces from Beethoven’s early and middle periods. The eight players conclude with Mendelssohn’s grandiose Octet.

They divide the Beethoven quartets and in Mendelssohn’s Octet the Belcea Quartet and Quatuor Ébène come together. Anyone who has ever experienced them at the same time, these blistering strings, knows of the goosebumps they produce. Both quartets have their own character and that is precisely what makes their playing together exciting, challenging, imaginative and colorful. Two of the world’s best quartets joining hands offers a fantastic listening sensation.

The Signum Quartett is deeply connected to South Africa’s history, especially since Xandi van Dijk, the viola player of the internationally renowned ensemble, was born there. The musicians are closely associated with several composers who suffered under the Apartheid. They are happy to share their musical heartstrings with listeners 30 years after the end of the Apartheid. 

Racism, anti-Semitism, marginalization and discrimination against minorities are more topical than ever. The program Bridge the chasms that divide takes its title from Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration speech in 1994. With music composed especially for the Signum Quartett by Denise Onen and Abel Selaocoe, highlighting the history of South Africa, the strings call attention to injustices both past and present. By performing beautiful music, the quartet expresses a message of hope aimed at a bright future.

A journey full of contrasts, Beethoven’s Fourteenth String Quartet is the Mount Everest of his late quartets and one of his most profound and complex works. Each of the seven movements, which flow into one another without interruption, reveals a new layer of melancholy and hope, making this quartet not only an unparalleled listening experience but also a reflection on life. For Beethoven himself, it was his favorite piece.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.

For their romantic morning, Quatuor Arod chose Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet, a piece that came about for not very romantic reasons: the composer was strapped for cash and picked up his pen. He needed only a few weeks for the four movements. The Andante is perhaps the most famous. None other than the writer Leo Tolstoy once sat next to Tchaikovsky during a performance of the quartet. This movement brought tears to his eyes. To conclude, the Arods play the slow movement from Dvořák’s Twelfth String Quartet.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

Grab a cup of coffee and join Katy Hamilton and her guests. Personal stories and anecdotes give a special insight into the complex world hidden behind the stage.

Every morning Katy welcomes musicians and composers who will dive into the string quartet with her. The guests are announced the day beforehand each time.

In English

Their hearts make a leap when making music on gut strings: violinists Alina Ibragimova and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux play in the English Chiaroscuro Quartet, an ensemble dedicated to authentic performance practice with total inspiration. The ladies apply all their knowledge and expertise during this masterclass to the youngest generation of quartets.

The young Dutch Animato Kwartet is making international headlines thanks to the musicians’ inspired playing. This afternoon, together with Khorshid Dadbeh, the quartet performs a brand-new work for string quartet and the ancient string instrument tanbur by Iranian-Dutch composer Aftab Darvishi. The pure harmonies of Monteverdi, Dutilleux’s night music and Golijov’s baroque bass lines frame this newcomer.

The tanbur is a more than a thousand-year-old stringed instrument with deep, historical roots in Iran. The instrument has evolved over the centuries, with variations in design and playing techniques, but it has always remained a symbol of Iran’s rich musical heritage. Kurdish soloist Khorshid Dadbeh is open to experimentation and loves to improvise. This makes her the perfect tanbur player for Darvishi’s new work.

The members of the Barbican Quartet seek surprising combinations of works that are close to their hearts and that they are curious about. The quartet, founded in 2014, has a distinctive style with its own sound and great emotional commitment. For Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, the players have a soft spot. The pairing of his music with Rebecca Clarke’s Poem and Ravel’s brilliant String Quartet marks the Barbican’s original programming. Clarke and Ravel knew each other well.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

The Spanish Cuarteto Casals takes you on a journey through Shostakovich’s early explorations in the string quartet genre. His first three quartets reflect his search for his own voice, offering an intimate glimpse into his life and state of mind. You can hear his doubts, his humor, his fears, and his resilience—everything that occupied him as both a man and an artist during a time of profound personal and political uncertainty.

Shostakovich originally titled his First String Quartet (1938) Spring. Written shortly after the birth of his son, the music radiates a sense of wonder and playful discovery. The Second String Quartet (1944) is a dazzling display of virtuosity, an emotional rollercoaster full of intensity. From the very first note of the Third String Quartet (1946), the composer’s unmistakable voice emerges—grand and overwhelming. What begins as a lighthearted, almost playful piece soon unfolds into a deeply moving musical narrative. A relentless war scherzo and a profoundly melancholic slow movement lead to an ending that is both poignant and almost otherworldly.

The brilliant Chiaroscuro Quartet focuses on historically informed performance practice. In one area, the musicians will not imitate their authentic predecessors: Beethoven’s premieres were plagued by too few rehearsals. Opus 127, the first of three commissioned works by the Russian aristocrat Galitzin, was important to Beethoven. The Schuppanzigh Quartet turned the primal performance into a farce. For today’s string quartets, perfection is the benchmark: not as an end, but as an indispensable means of conveying the grandeur of the composition.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.

Tchaikovsky’s Third String Quartet feels like a journey through a colorful Russian picture book, with all the moods that go with it. During their Super romantic Morning, the four ambitious players of the young German Malion Quartett take on this mix of bittersweet melodies and dancing rhythms. A masterful musical rollercoaster to start the day.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

Grab a cup of coffee and join Katy Hamilton and her guests. Personal stories and anecdotes give a special insight into the complex world hidden behind the stage.

Every morning Katy welcomes musicians and composers who will dive into the string quartet with her. The guests are announced the day beforehand each time.

In English

Haydn for modern ears, played by the Chaos String Quartet – that is the formula of Een flat met duizend ramen. This brand-new imaginative series consists of six short performances, two per concert. Six string quartets by Haydn, new music and texts by Joke van Leeuwen take center stage. Star actress Ariane Schluter takes on the roles of a series of characters from the here and now: all have a relationship with Haydn’s music.

The miniseries Een flat met duizend ramen take the form of a frame story. Each episode zooms in on one of the main characters. Not surprisingly, Haydn’s six Sun Quartets form the starting point. In this collection, bundled as Opus 20, Haydn highlighted all the possibilities of the string quartet, a then-new chamber music form. Now, three centuries later, six composers add their own perspectives.

Aleš Březina writes music for theatre and film, among other things, he is a musicologist and director of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute in Prague. He is deeply involved in the person and work of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. This compatriot of Březina’s nurtured a lifelong love for the string quartet.

In a blazing speech, Březina explains Martinů’s commitment. The Pavel Haas Quartet illustrates with short excerpts how to perform Martinů’s music and, above all, how not to.

There is no doubt that the Pavel Haas Quartet has a fondness for the music of its compatriots like no other. Czech master Bohuslav Martinů is one such compatriot. To give a glimpse into the beauty of this composer’s attractive but unruly musical idiom, the quartet made a striking selection, in which Martinů’s string quartet language comes alive in all its facets.

Martinů took over from his compatriots Smetana, Dvořák and Janáček as the greatest Czech composer in the 20th century. Like his predecessors, he intensely loved the string quartet, writing seven of them between 1918 and 1947. The Third closes a period when Bohemian rhythms and melodies were paramount. The works from his middle period bear a neo-classical stamp, with the Fifth taking on a more introverted tone. After fleeing from the European war effort, Martinů wrote energetic string quartets in the United States full of distinctive rhythms.

The Malion Quartett from Frankfurt is playing for the first time at the String Quartet Biennale and immediately sets the stakes high with some of the finest works for string quartet. The fugue is central to this program. The seventeen-year-old Mozart used the fugue form in his Eighth String Quartet. Shostakovich, like Mozart a great admirer of Bach, also applied the fugue technique in his Ninth String Quartet. The resounding result is grand, emotional music.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

Pianist Olga Pashchenko is completely in her element when she can enchant the listener with the sound palette of the different instruments she plays. When it comes to an early work by Mozart, she takes her place behind an instrument from exactly that era. The historically informed Chiaroscuro Quartet, the top in this segment, accompanies Pashchenko in the Piano Concertos Nos 12 and 14, framed by fantasies by Mozart and Purcell.

The arrangements of Mozart’s Twelfth and Fourteenth piano concertos are by the composer himself. This choice of a smaller instrumentation reflects not only the popularity of chamber music in Mozart’s time, but also his ability to adapt complex musical ideas to changing circumstances. The pairing of the keyboard instrument and just four strings create an extremely intimate encounter.

Beethoven contracted pneumonia on a trip in an open carriage through terrible weather in the autumn of 1826. He completed his last complete work, Opus 135, on 30 October 1826 and he died in March 1827. After the epic scope of his penultimate quartet, one would expect Beethoven’s swan song to be a grand finale. Sure, this music is deep and introspective, but here Beethoven also achieves a concise transparency that alludes to his teacher Haydn. This is how he completes the circle.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.

From a melancholic state of mind to exuberant energy: with its free expression and thematic complexity, Schumann’s Third String Quartet offers a personal portrait of the person behind the music. As a composer, Schumann sought his place alongside the virtuoso and successful concert pianist Clara Wieck, who was recently his wife. The young Leonkoro Quartet will make Schumann’s passion for Clara in his music palpable.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

Grab a cup of coffee and join Katy Hamilton and her guests. Personal stories and anecdotes give a special insight into the complex world hidden behind the stage.

Every morning Katy welcomes musicians and composers who will dive into the string quartet with her. The guests are announced the day beforehand each time.

In English

In the program Future Echoes, past, present and future find each other in the form of light and sound. The creators put Schönberg’s Second String Quartet at the center and Vinthya Perinpanathan juxtaposes a newly composed work with Schönberg’s pioneering notes. The concept of the ‘harmony of spheres’ offers a counterpoint to relationships between notes and intervals that was seen as ideal, in both music and the cosmos.

Tradition and innovation go together with the curious creators of Future Echoes. In Future Echoes, the high-profile young soprano Elisabeth Hetherington, winner of the Dutch Music Prize 2024, collaborates with the ADAM Quartet, composer Vinthya Perinpanathan and a lighting designer. With her commissioned work, Perinpanathan writes a tribute to Schönberg’s innovation while reflecting on the evolution of musical expression over the centuries.

Alexander Raskatov, known in The Netherlands for his highly successful operas A Dog’s Heart and Animal Farm, is writing a new work at the request of the String Quartet Biennale. Quatuor Arod is eager to perform the world premiere. Alongside the contemporary Russian, the four string players place Haydn and Kurtág to create a rich musical landscape. Together, they illustrate the evolution of classical music and the power of creativity over the centuries: Haydn laid the foundations, while Kurtág and Raskatov explore new paths within tradition.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

*Co-commission with Biennale de quatuors à cordes and ProQuartet

No wonder the Pavel Haas Quartet, as a promoter of home-grown music, puts on an all-Dvořák program. The Czech Antonín Dvořák engaged in the string quartet genre all his life. Some quartets, including the ‘American’, have become world-famous, but most have yet to be discovered by the public. One of them, the Eleventh String Quartet of 1881, was commissioned by the concertmaster of the Vienna opera orchestra, on the advice of Brahms.

A better-known string quartet by Dvořák is the Fourteenth, his last. It shows Dvořák’s overwhelming happiness on returning to his homeland. As a young piano teacher, Dvořák fell madly in love with his pupil Josefa and for her he wrote a series of love songs. His feelings were not reciprocated, and, like Mozart, he married the younger sister of his first flame. Some of the songs Dvořák later published in a string quartet version under the title ‘Cypresses’.

The American Attacca Quartet consists of four quirky string players and has an entirely unique take on Beethoven’s music. Not taking any note for granted, the players’ curiosity about form and color produces an exciting dialogue with the music. This attitude makes the foursome a perfect match for the older Beethoven, for whom originality and eloquence were most important.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.

For the English Marmen Quartet, Brahms is the ideal composer to start the day with. Within the rich musical texture of his warm First String Quartet, each voice tells its own story. Brahms displays not only technical virtuosity but also his profound emotional world, making this an undeniable classic that continues to touch us.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

Grab a cup of coffee and join Katy Hamilton and her guests. Personal stories and anecdotes give a special insight into the complex world hidden behind the stage.

Every morning Katy welcomes musicians and composers who will dive into the string quartet with her. The guests are announced the day beforehand each time.

In English

What does play in tune really mean? And how do you do it? Quatuor Arod invites you to explore the infinite possibilities of harmony within the string quartet. The musicians take us on a journey that is about consonance, about timbre and about what the use of vibrato does to a sound.

When do you use vibrato and how does it affect the music? The Arods playfully show and let us hear how to achieve the most beautiful harmonies and when and why they affect us.

Haydn for modern ears, played by the Chaos String Quartet – that is the formula of Een flat met duizend ramen. This brand-new imaginative series consists of six short performances, two per concert. Six string quartets by Haydn, new music and texts by Joke van Leeuwen take center stage. Star actress Ariane Schluter takes on the roles of a series of characters from the here and now: all have a relationship with Haydn’s music.

The miniseries Een flat met duizend ramen take the form of a frame story. Each episode zooms in on one of the main characters. Not surprisingly, Haydn’s six Sun Quartets form the starting point. In this collection, bundled as Opus 20, Haydn highlighted all the possibilities of the string quartet, a then-new chamber music form. Now, three centuries later, six composers add their own perspectives.

What is good comes fast. Those who, like the Leonkoro Quartet, win prizes from the Concertgebouw, the German Schallplattenkritik and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust within a few months need prove nothing more. After their smashing debut during the 2024 edition, the String Quartet Biennale is proud to program the Berlin foursome again, with Mozart and Mendelssohn. What’s rock solid comes super-fast.

Well before Spotify, music lovers relied on arrangements to learn concertos for soloists and orchestra. Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante began a new life as a string sextet in 1804 and became extraordinarily popular in that format. The Leonkoros, together with Takehiro Konoe and Julian Steckel, make way for the Grande sestetto concertante.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Sergei Prokofiev was transferred to the Caucasus with other artists. After getting to know the folk music there, Prokofiev wrote: ‘The combination of unknown oriental folklore with the classical string quartet must yield interesting results.’ The proof is in his Second String Quartet, a dazzling show of Kabardic dance themes. The Maxwell Quartet enriches the program with a brand new work by the Jamaican-British Eleanor Alberga.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

*Co-commission with Dublin International Chamber Music Festival and Maxwell Quartet Music

The PUBLIQuartet seeks the answer to the question: what is American? Boundaries blur in the music the quartet brings; boundaries between improvisation and composition, between Afro-futurism and contemporary classical performance practice, between the perceived past and the imagined future. This program envisions a future for American classical music in which improvisation is central; the works breathe the spirit of the here and now.

According to The New York Times, the pioneering PUBLIQuartet offers ‘a respectful acknowledgement of the past’ and takes ‘a confident step forward’. The quartet is committed to their own country, that much is certain. What is American: Found Futures is a call to reflect on the kaleidoscope of composers and genres that make up the rich musical history of the complex nation of America. For an earlier episode, captured on CD, the quartet was nominated for a Grammy.

The American Attacca Quartet is the embodiment of the contemporary string quartet: diverse in composition, surprising in repertoire and program choices and groundbreaking in collaborations and performances. In Amsterdam, the musicians will play the Dutch premiere of David Lang’s daisy, co-commissioned by the String Quartet Biennale. They pair the newcomer with more music from their own country and introduce the contemporary sounds with music from the Renaissance.

For David Lang’s composition commission daisy, the String Quartet Biennale is collaborating with La Biennale di Venezia, where the piece was premiered in late 2024. The piece was written to be performed in a program with Black Angels by George Crumb. For Lang, Black Angels is a favorite work and, in his opinion, one of the best contemporary quartets. Lang was inspired by the time around the Vietnam War, which also motivated Crumb.

*Co-commission with La Biennale di Venezia

Schumann composed for piano for ten years, but wanted more. To his wife Clara, he wrote: ‘The piano becomes too limited for me, I hear all sorts of things that I can hardly touch.’ Schumann delved into scores by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but mostly studied Mendelssohn’s quartets. Schumann’s Second String Quartet, the closest to Mendelssohn, is in good hands with the Quatuor Van Kuijk, which received jubilant reviews for its integral Mendelssohn recording.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

The 2026 festival edition features many talented young string quartets. In the program section Grass Roots, the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam presents three promising quartets. The winners of the top string quartet competitions are on hand with a program in which they stylishly convey their character as string quartets. With an inventive take on the repertoire and with their awareness of past and present, they represent the youngest generation of string quartets.

The first quartet for this concert is Opus13, the winner of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition 2025.
The winners of the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition will be announced later this year.

The Belinfante Quartet is ‘glowing with interplay and experimentation’ (NRC). This young foursome, participants in the SQBA Residency a few years ago, has broad musical interests and effortlessly spans centuries. Nine hundred years sit between Hildegard von Bingen and Mathilde Wantenaar, whose new work will be heard, written on commission for the String Quartet Biennale. Rhiannon Randle composed Baile for the Belinfantes.

Two program pieces fit together perfectly: Hildegard von Bingen’s O virtus sapientiae and the final movement, La Serenissima, from Britten’s Third String Quartet. Hildegard lived all her life in the Rhineland; Venice remained terra incognita for her. But Venice’s title of honor, ‘La Serenissima’, evokes associations with the main characteristic of Hildegard’s music: the serene. For centuries, diplomacy and justice brought peace to Venice – concepts Hildegard refers to as ‘the virtue of wisdom’. That Britten reached a deep spirituality in his very last notes, written in Venice, just like Hildegard, completes the circle.

According to the PUBLIQuartet, composers John Corigliano and Andy Akiho reveal a hugely exciting, colorful and distinctive contemporary American sound. The quartet’s four string players, free and original minds with a penchant for experimentation, have christened their program American Icons and are happy to present new sounds from their native soil. 20th-century Julia Perry’s Prelude adds a mellow tone.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

Our whole life revolves around time, but how much time do we spend on what we really love? In Time is how you spend your love, DOMNIQ – Dominique Vleeshouwers, the first percussionist to win the Dutch Music Prize – composer Samuel Adams and the Marmen Quartet show how time and space affect our passions. The program covers a wide range of works, ranging from existing core repertoire for string quartet and for percussion solo to various combinations.

Adams’ composition Sundial forms the basis of Time is how you spend your love and paints an enchanting dreamscape, enhanced by a dynamic lighting design and the strategic placement of sound in space. And when Beethoven repeats the same motif 48 times in the Scherzo of his Sixteenth String Quartet, it becomes clear that for him, too, playing with time held no secrets.

*Co-commission with Tromp Percussion Eindhoven

A first: the Norwegian Engegård Quartet and the North Sea String Quartet from The Netherlands together on one stage! The North Sea String Quartet’s greatest love is improvisation, which will merge with the folk music the Engegård brings along. This double string ensemble is ideally suited to translate the layering of improvisation, folk melodies and their rhythms into an intimate and sophisticated context. Traditional Norwegian melodies and the organic playing of the North Sea String Quartet will meld into a colorful whole. 

The Engegård Quartet has its roots in the Lofoten Islands, the magnificent Norwegian archipelago where silence is interrupted only by the wind that is always howling around the mountain peaks. The contrast of this vast landscape with the bustling port city of Rotterdam, home to the North Sea String Quartet where all kinds of cultures come together as well as an international hotspot of modern architecture, cannot but leave its mark in the collaboration of both quartets.

‘Extraordinarily lively playing’, is what the Engegård Quartet delivered according to the press. The Norwegian foursome brings out the lyrical and serene Brahms in his Second String Quartet, composed in the summer of 1873. This music echoes the German romantic tradition and Brahms’ great admiration for Beethoven. Here we do hear the youthful Brahms before the iconic beard. Joseph Joachim’s quartet played the premiere. Brahms incorporated Joachim’s motto ‘Frei Aber Einsam’ into his music, but gave it his own twist: ‘Frei Aber Froh’. Both the note sequence f-a-e and f-a-f feature prominently in the piece.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.

Grab a cup of coffee and join Katy Hamilton and her guests. Personal stories and anecdotes give a special insight into the complex world hidden behind the stage.

Every morning Katy welcomes musicians and composers who will dive into the string quartet with her. The guests are announced the day beforehand each time.

In English

He is no stranger to The Netherlands: Olli Mustonen, an exceptional pianist and composer. His innovative approach to both existing and new repertoire fascinates time and again; this Finn’s flair splashes off the stage. In a master class, Mustonen shares his knowledge and skills with a young up-and-coming quartet.

Haydn for modern ears, played by the Chaos String Quartet – that is the formula of Een flat met duizend ramen. This brand-new imaginative series consists of six short performances, two per concert. Six string quartets by Haydn, new music and texts by Joke van Leeuwen take center stage. Star actress Ariane Schluter takes on the roles of a series of characters from the here and now: all have a relationship with Haydn’s music.

The miniseries Een flat met duizend ramen take the form of a frame story. Each episode zooms in on one of the main characters. Not surprisingly, Haydn’s six Sun Quartets form the starting point. In this collection, bundled as Opus 20, Haydn highlighted all the possibilities of the string quartet, a then-new chamber music form. Now, three centuries later, six composers add their own perspectives.

Quatuor Arod is among the most interesting quartets of the young generation. One of the quartet’s musical friends is Klaus Mäkelä, a marvel as a conductor and honest and passionate as a cellist. The quintet has previously gone all out in Schubert’s magnificent String Quintet and will lovingly do so again at the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam.

Master filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon knows how to capture the inspiration of musicians worldwide with his camera. From Glenn Gould and Mstislav Rostropovich to the young guard: what drives them, what is their passion? He made Ménage à quatre, about Quatuor Arod. Monsaingeon introduces this documentary on the Great Hall stage

The French Quatuor Van Kuijk is creating a furor, including at the String Quartet Biennale. The men present a choice of their own, an intriguing dialogue between musical ideas. Kabalevsky’s Second String Quartet is rarely heard live. The intense rhythms and agile nature of this piece give the music a contemporary flair. That rhythmic sparkle can also be heard in Mendelssohn’s Sixth String Quartet, embedded in a more refined note pattern. It is right up the Van Kuijks’ street, Mendelssohn: they recorded all his quartets in a grandiose manner.

In the Selected by series, contrasts and connections resound; the musical language of different composers scrapes past each other or fits together wonderfully. In one hour, you will hear the string quartet repertoire across the board: all times, styles, sounds and colors.

The festive final concert of the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam brings together the Norwegian Engegård Quartet and the Scottish Maxwell Quartet: two well-kept secrets in string quartet country, fully deserving of a place in the spotlight. They shine in an original work: the First nonet by Finnish composer and pianist Olli Mustonen. This original mind performs his own Piano Quintet with the Engegård and Milhaud’s La création du monde in an arrangement for the same instrumentation.

Olli Mustonen’s extraordinary musicality cannot be praised enough. As a composer, he treads his own path, writing in a contemporary idiom on which there is no stamp. The pianist Mustonen leaves no listener unmoved; his eccentric, human playing and his great stage presence make a concert a true experience.