Piatti Quartet

Winner of several competitions and frequently heard in recital, the Piatti Quartet is one of the U.K.’s notable chamber ensembles. The group has a strong commitment to contemporary music.
The Piatti Quartet is named for 19th century cellist Alfredo Piatti, who taught for many years at the Royal Academy of Music. Its members are violinists Michael Trainor and Rebecca Chan, who frequently switch between the first and second violin parts, violist Tetsuumi Nagata, and cellist Jessie Ann Richardson. The Piatti Quartet’s studies were furthered by a Hattori Foundation Award and the Martin Musical/Philharmonia Scholarship Fund. The quartet’s early years were marked by an impressive set of competition prizes, including a win at the St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Music Competition in 2011, the inaugural year for the event. In 2013, the group made its recording debut on the Linn Records label with a recording of chamber versions of three Mozart piano concertos with pianist Gottlieb Wallisch. A major breakthrough came with a second prize overall and several specific prizes at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. One of those was the Sidney Griller Award, given for the best performance of the work Contusion by Mark-Anthony Turnage.
That marked a forward step in a commitment to contemporary music exhibited by the Piatti Quartet, who have worked with prominent British composers, including Simon Holt, Freya Waley-Cohen, and Darren Bloom. The quartet has collaborated with a wide variety of artists, including tenors Ian Bostridge and Nicky Spence, clarinetist Michael Collins, and pianist Janina Fialkowska. The Piatti Quartet has appeared at many prestigious halls, such as the L’Orangerie Musée in Paris, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and Antoni Gaudí’s La Pedrera in Barcelona, Spain. Plans for the early 2020s included a debut at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as well as return appearances at Wigmore Hall and the Aldeburgh Festival. In 2021, the quartet was heard on a recording of chamber music by Gavin Higgins. The following year, the Piatti Quartet performed Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge for tenor, piano, and string quartet with Spence and pianist Timothy Ridout in a recording for the Hyperion label and was set to inaugurate a new cycle of recordings of the music of Turnage, whose String Quartet No. 4 (“Winter’s Edge”) the group had commissioned. In addition to performing, members of the Piatti Quartet teach at Trinity Laban, the Royal Academy of Music, and Purcell School. They also do outreach concerts in primary schools. ~ James Manheim