Amaryllis Quartet, Quartet

Biography

The German/Swiss Amaryllis Quartet was trained in Basel
by Walter Levin (first violinist of the LaSalle Quartet) and since 2007 is
being coached by the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne.

The Amaryllis Quartet
treats concert programming as a special challenge, contrasting works by classical-era
string quartet composers with those by Arnold Schoenberg and his Second
Viennese School. The quartet has given concerts with that guiding idea at the
Biennale Bern, the KulturGut Holzhausen and the International Beethoven
Festival in Bonn. At the latter, they opened an exhibition of Schoenberg's
paintings with the composer's daughter Nuria Schoenberg-Nono in attendance.

The rediscovery of
forgotten masterworks is an another priority for the members of the young
quartet. They have a special interest in the Hungarian composer Géza Frid, a
student of Bartók, and made the world-premiere recording of his string
quartets, released in 2008 by Coviello Classics. A recording for cpo of eight
of the sixteen string quartets by the violin virtuoso and Schubert-contemporary
Friedrich Ernst Fesca is in preparation.

The quartet is also
committed to the performance of contemporary music and has given world
premieres of works by the Berlin jazz cellist and composer Mathis Brun and the
Estonian composer Eino Tamberg. On last year's agenda were premieres of string
quartets by the Swiss composer Heidi Baader-Nobs (Basel) and the German
composer Wolfgang Andreas Schultz (Hamburg).

The Amaryllis Quartet
is a regular participant in concert series and festivals in Germany,
Switzerland and other countries in Europe. Some of their more important
appearances were in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, at the Lucerne Festival, at
the Festival "Mecklenburg-Vorpommern," at the Società del Quartetto di Milano and
at the Schubertiade in Barcelona. Furthermore, the quartet founded its own
concert series at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg and the Konzertsaal Solothurn.

The organization
ProQuartet (Paris) regularly invites the quartet to give concerts in France and
together with ACCR made possible a one-month residency for the quartet in
Provence in the summer of 2007.

For Southwest German
Radio's (SWR) "50 Masterworks" series the Amaryllis Quartet, together with
Walter Levin, presented Webern's "Five Pieces for String Quartet, op. 5." For
Radio Berlin Brandenburg and at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin the quartet gave
another lecture recital with Walter Levin, this time presenting the second
string quartet of Johannes Brahms.

In April 2005 the
Amaryllis quartet won first prize at the international "Charles Hennen Concours"
in the Netherlands. Last year the quartet won the Irene Steels Wilsing Prize at
the "Premio Borciani" in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and two prizes at the
international string quartet competition TROMP in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The
Eindhoven jury awarded the Press Prize to the quartet with the comment,
"Judging by their cultivated sound and their deep understanding of what it
means to be a quartet, they are now ready for a career." This year the quartet
also was awarded a grant from the Deutschen Musikrat competition.

For further artistic
development, the Amaryllis Quartet has attended master classes with the Artemis
Quartet and has given concerts with guest artists such as Barbara Westphal,
Albrecht Breuninger, Francois Benda, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Jens Peter Maintz,
Patrick Demenga, and the actor Christoph Bantzer.