HAGEN QUARTET

Hagen Quartet “Music that sounds as if it came from another planet…” “The pinnacle of musicality!” (Drehpunkt Kultur and Die Presse.com) After recitals given by the “four world-class string players from Salzburg”, rapt audiences remain “entranced several minutes with quasi-absolute stillness in their thoughts, well aware that they have experienced something truly exceptional”, as the press has noted. On these occasions, concertgoers share “the wish that the music would never stop.” For chamber music lovers, the 2018/19 season thus offers a number of welcome opportunities for utter listening enjoyment – “unforgettable moments of sheer musical magic” (Drehpunkt Kultur). The Hagen Quartet will be focusing on Franz Schubert for this season. In addition, they will also be directing their attention mainly to Shostakovich, but also to Beethoven, Dvoràk and Schumann with all their tonal shapes and concentrated musical details. Once again, in the course of this concert season, the Hagen Quartet’s performance schedule will take them to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Wigmore Hall London and moreover to Brussels, Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin, to name but a few. They are also guests again at the Salzburg Festival and the Schubertiade Hohenems. In Asia there will be another tour with concerts in Tokyo and Fukushima as well as concerts in China, Macao and Taiwan. The Hagen Quartet will travel to the United States for concerts at Carnegie Hall New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Philadelphia. The Hagen Quartet’s recording featuring the Mozart String Quintets K387 and K458 was awarded the Diapason d’or and the Choc of Classica Magazine (France), as well as the coveted German ECHO Klassik Prize (2016) for the Best Chamber Music Recording of the 17th/18th Centuries. In 2011, the Hagen Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary with two recordings for Myrios Classics featuring works by Mozart, Webern, Beethoven, Grieg and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet (with Jörg Widmann). That same year, the Hagen Quartet won the ECHO Klassik Prize as Ensemble of the Year; in 2012, the quartet was named Honorary Member of the Vienna Konzerthaus. The Hagen Quartet’s unprecedented 3 1/2-decade career began in 1981. Its early years, marked by a series of prizes in chamber music competitions and an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon that was to produce around forty-five CDs over the following twenty years, enabled the group to work its way through the immensely vast repertoire for string quartet in which this ensemble’s distinctive profile has emerged. Collaborations with artistic personalities such as György Kurtág and the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt are as important to the Hagen Quartet as its concert Müller & Pavlik artistic management GmbH appearances with performers including Maurizio Pollini, Mitsuko Uchida, Sabine Meyer, Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff, and Jörg Widmann. The group’s concert repertoire and discography feature attractive and intelligently arranged programmes embracing the entire history of the string quartet genre, from its pre-Haydn beginnings right through to Kurtág. The Hagen Quartet also works closely with composers of its own generation: not only reviving existing works, but also commissioning and premiering new pieces. Many young string quartets regard the Hagen Quartet as a model in terms of sound quality, stylistic variety, ensemble playing and serious commitment to the works and composers of the genre. As teachers and mentors at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Hochschule in Basel, as well as in international masterclasses, the quartet’s members pass on their great wealth of experience to younger colleagues. The Hagen Quartet plays on old Italian master instruments.