Takacs Quartet

The world-renowned Takács Quartet is now in the midst of its 50th anniversary season.

Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola), and András Fejér (cello) are excited about projects including a new concerto for them and the orchestra of the Colorado Music Festival by Gabriela Lena Frank. In November the group released its latest Hyperion project, Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Flow. A new album with pianist MarcAndré Hamelin will be released in the spring featuring works by Florence Price and Antonín Dvořák.

The Takács maintains a busy international touring schedule. This year the ensemble will perform in South Korea, Japan, and Australia, with the Australian tour centered around a new piece for quartet and narrator by Kathy Milliken. As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the group will present four concerts featuring works by Haydn, Britten, Ngwenyama, Beethoven, and Janáček and two performances of Schubert’s cello quintet with Adrian Brendel. During the season the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Barcelona, Budapest, Milan, Basel, Bath, Bern, and the Mozartfest.

Along with two programs at Cal Performances, the group’s North American engagements this season include concerts in New York, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Washington DC, La Jolla, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Tucson, Portland, and Princeton, and collaborations with pianists Stephen Hough and Jeremy Denk.

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. During the summer months the ensemble joins the faculty at the Music Academy of the West, running an intensive quartet seminar.

The Takács has recorded for Hyperion since 2005. The troup’s most recent album includes Schubert’s final quartet D. 887. This and all their other recordings are available to stream at www.hyperion-streaming.co.uk. In 2021, the quartet won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for its recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy, and Britten, as well as piano quintets by Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvořák (with Lawrence Power). For its CDs on the Decca/London label, the quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits. Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the quartet’s website.

The Takács Quartet is known for its innovative programming. During the 2021–22 season, the ensemble partnered with bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014, the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. The group has toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

In 2014, the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai, and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Takács made its North American debut tour in 1982. Members of the group are the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation. The musicians are grateful to be Thomastik-Infeld Artists.