Program Books/Brentano String Quartet
The Brentano String Quartet, two men and two women, hold their instruments and smile down at the camera from a white spiral staircase.

Brentano String Quartet

With a career spanning more than three decades, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism; and the Times (London) hails the ensemble’s “wonderful, selfless music-making.” Known for its unique sensibility, probing interpretive style, and original programming, the quartet has performed across five continents in the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, thus establishing itself as one of the world’s preeminent ensembles.

Dedicated and highly sought after as educators, the members of the quartet have served as Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music for the past decade. They also lead the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and appear regularly at the Taos School of Music. Previously, the quartet served for 15 years as Ensemble in Residence at Princeton University.

During the 2024–25 concert season, the quartet premieres a program called Evocations of Home, featuring a new work by Lei Liang in honor of the late composer Chou Wen-chung. During spring 2025, the group will perform Haydn’s complete Op. 33 quartets at New York’s Carnegie Hall and in several other US cities. Other recent projects include Dido Reimagined, a monodrama for quartet and voice with soprano Dawn Upshaw, composed by Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, as well as a viola quintet, Heart Speaks to Heart, by composer James MacMillan.

Formed in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has received numerous accolades, including, in 1995, the prestigious Naumburg and Cleveland Quartet Awards. The members have been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, as well as pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss. The quartet has commissioned works from some of the most important composers of our time, including Bruce Adolphe, Matthew Aucoin, Gabriela Frank, Stephen Hartke, Vijay Iyer, Steven Mackey, and Charles Wuorinen.

The quartet’s notable recordings include Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 131 (Aeon), which was featured in the 2012 film A Late Quartet, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, and a 2017 live album with Joyce DiDonato, Into the Fire—Live from Wigmore Hall (Warner.) The ensemble’s most recent release features the K. 428 and K. 465 (Dissonance) quartets of Mozart for the Azica label.

The Brentano String Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

The Brentano String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists.

www.brentanoquartet.com