Elias String Quartet

Britain’s Elias String Quartet has made its name through intense, powerful interpretations of core quartet repertory, including an acclaimed cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets. The group takes its name from Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elias (known as Elijah in English). The four members joined forces at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1998, where their coach was Christopher Rowland. The quartet traveled to the Cologne Hochschule für Musik to study with the Alban Berg Quartet, and has benefited from mentorships by György Kurtág, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and Henri Dutilleux, among others. After becoming New Generation Artists of the BBC Radio 3 network in 2009, the group won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and has since appeared at top European and American venues. In the U.S., it has performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress; it has also toured the U.S. with pianist Jonathan Biss, with whom it has recorded piano quintets of Schumann and Dvorák for the Onyx label. The group’s first recording was of music by Mendelssohn, made for the ASV label in 2007. Between 2011 and 2015 the Elias String Quartet performed all of Beethoven’s quartets at London’s Wigmore Hall, and beginning in 2015 those recordings were released on Wigmore Hall’s own label. In 2018 the fourth volume of the set was released. The Elias Quartet has championed contemporary music, performing works by Sally Beamish, Colin Matthews, Matthew Hindson, Huw Watkins, and Timo Andres and working closely with Henri Dutilleux on his string quartet Ainsi la Nuit. It served as resident quartet for the Music in the Round series in the city of Sheffield for four years. The Elias Quartet’s concert schedule for 2018 included a performance at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, a residency at the University of Iowa in the U.S., an appearance on the University Musical Society series in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a three-night “After Beethoven” concert series held in conjunction with the Martin Randall Holiday in Lavenham, U.K. ~ James Manheim