Maria Ehmer | Violin
Anna Knopp | Violin
Milan Milojicic | Viola
Leonhard Roczek | Violoncello

“The Minetti Quartet is a musical sensation from Austria.” | Der Tagesspiegel

Since its founding in 2003, the Austrian Minetti Quartet has made its home in Vienna, steadily conquering a fixed place on the international string quartet scene. Ever since it was nominated for the European Concert Hall Organization ECHO’s “Rising Stars” cycle in 2008/09, the Quartet has made repeated guest appearances in Europe’s most distinguished concert halls in Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, Brussels and London, to name just a few. The ensemble is also at home at the continent’s major festivals, including the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Aldeburgh Festival, Salzburg’s Mozart Week, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Rheingau Music Festival. Many of its performances have been recorded and broadcast by international radio stations.

The illustrious list of the Minetti Quartet’s guest artists includes luminaries such as Fazil Say, Till Fellner, Jörg Widmann, Paul Meyer, Sharon Kam, Thomas Riebl, István Vardai, Camille Thomas, Alois Posch and the Mandelring Quartet. The ensemble has also performed as soloists with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz.

Highlights of the coming 2022/23 season include an extensive American tour, a return to Vienna’s Konzerthaus with Kit Armstrong as guest artist, and invitations to return to Stockholm’s Konserthuset, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg and the Brucknerfest in Linz.

Collaboration with contemporary, especially Austrian composers has become an increasing focus of the Quartet’s work in recent years. Many works have been dedicated to the Minetti Quartet, which gave their world premieres, for example Johannes Boris Borowski’s String Quartet No. 3 this coming season, or Ángela Tröndle’s String Quartet No. 2.
These and other programmes can be heard at MuTh, Vienna’s latest concert hall, where the Quartet has had its own concert cycle for four years.

The Minetti Quartet is the winner of numerous international chamber music competitions, for example the competition “Franz Schubert and the Music of Modernism” in 2006 and the International Joseph Haydn Competition in 2007. It also received the Austrian “Grand Gradus ad Parnassum Prize”, the Start-up Fund of the Austrian Federal Ministry and the Karajan Stipend.

Mentors and supporters of the Minetti Quartet include Johannes Meissl and the members of the Alban Berg Quartet at Vienna’s University of Music, where the Quartet was founded in 2003. As participants in the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA), they also received essential artistic impulses from Ferenc Rados, Alfred Brendel and members of the Artemis, Amadeus and Hagen Quartets.

Hänssler Classic has released four highly acclaimed CD recordings of string quartets by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schubert since 2009; Avi music released a CD of clarinet quintets with Matthias Schorn. The next CD release is planned for the end of 2022, featuring music of the 20th century by Berg, Ligeti and Shostakovich.

The Quartet has given and continues to give regular master courses and lessons in Finland, Spain, Sweden, Mexico and at American and Austrian universities. Milan Milojicic and Leonhard Roczek also hold teaching positions in the viola and chamber music departments at Salzburg’s Mozarteum University.

The Minetti Quartet’s name refers to a play by the writer Thomas Bernhard, who lived in Ohlsdorf in the Salzkammergut region, where the two violinists of the Quartet grew up. The National Bank of Austria has lent the Quartet two violins by G. B. Guadagnini (the “Mantegazza” of 1774 and the “ex Meinel” of 1770-1775). Milan Milojicic plays a viola built by Bernd Hiller in 2009.

2022 | 2023

www.minettiquartett.at

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