The Aviv String Quartet is a musical quartet that was founded in Israel in 1997. [1] Among the quartet's various awards are the DaimlerChrysler Grand Prize at the 3rd Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and top prizes at the Bordeaux and Schubert Competitions. [2] The Aviv Quartet has recorded 3 discs of Shostakovich on Dalia Classics and 2 Naxos discs of Hoffmeister and Schulhoff. [2] It completed the Shostakovich cycle at the 2007 Verbier Festival, debuts at the Zurich Tonhalle and Brussels Palais des Beaux–Arts and returns visits to Wigmore Hall. [3]
In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly a string quartet. The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a piano quintet. The genre flourished during the nineteenth century.
The Emerson String Quartet, also known as the Emerson Quartet, was an American string quartet initially formed as a student group at the Juilliard School in 1976. It was named for American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and began touring professionally in 1976. The ensemble taught in residence at The Hartt School in the 1980s and is currently the quartet in residence at Stony Brook University. Both of the founding violinists studied with Oscar Shumsky at Juilliard, and the two alternated as first and second violinists for the group. The Emerson Quartet was one of the first such ensembles with the two violinists alternating chairs.
Kim Kashkashian is an American violist. She has spent her career in the U.S. and Europe and collaborated with many major contemporary composers. In 2013 she won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. She is recognized as one of the world's top violists.
The Kopelman Quartet is a Russian string quartet founded in 2002 by Mikhail Kopelman (violin), Boris Kuschnir (violin), Igor Sulyga (viola) and Mikhail Milman (cello). They studied at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1970s, but pursued individual careers for twenty-five years before founding the quartet.
Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov was a Russian-British composer and academic teacher, who also published as Dmitri N. Smirnov and D. Smirnov-Sadovsky. He wrote operas, symphonies, string quartets and other chamber music, and vocal music from song to oratorio. Many of his works were inspired by the art of William Blake.
Dmitri Shostakovich began work on his String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, Op. 108, in May 1959 and completed it in March 1960. He dedicated it to the memory of his first wife Nina Vassilyevna Varzar, who died in December 1954. This piece was composed in the year that would have marked her 50th birthday. This quartet was premiered in Leningrad Glinka Concert Hall by the Beethoven Quartet on May 15, 1960.
The Pacifica Quartet is a professional string quartet based in Bloomington, Indiana. Its members are: Simin Ganatra, first violin; Austin Hartman, second violin; Mark Holloway, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello. Formed in 1994 by Ganatra and Vamos with violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson and violist Kathryn Lockwood, the group won prizes in competitions such as the 1996 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the 1997 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. In 2001, violist Masumi Per Rostad replaced Lockwood. The group subsequently received Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in 2002, the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, and was named "Ensemble of the Year" by Musical America in 2009. In 2017, violinist Austin Hartman replaced Bernhardsson and violist Guy Ben-Ziony replaced Rostad.
The Audubon Quartet (1974-2011) was an American string quartet based at residencies at Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania (1974-1979) and at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia (1980-2001).
Karen Surenovich Khachaturian was a Soviet and Russian composer of Armenian ethnicity and the nephew of composer Aram Khachaturian.
The St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) is a Canadian string quartet.
Toshio Hosokawa is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music. He studied in Germany but returned to Japan, finding a personal style inspired by classical Japanese music and culture. He has composed operas, the oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima, and instrumental music.
Nevsky String Quartet is a string quartet based in St. Petersburg, Russia. They are noted for their award-winning performances of Russian music and their performances of contemporary music.
Krzysztof Meyer is a Polish composer, pianist, and music scholar, formerly dean of the Department of Music Theory (1972–1975) at the State College of Music, and president of the Polish Composers' Union (1985–1989). Meyer was professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne from 1987 to 2008, before his retirement.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Steven Roy Gerber was an American composer of classical music. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1969 at the age of twenty. He then attended Princeton University with a fellowship to study musical composition.
Cecil Aronowitz was a British viola player, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, a leading chamber musician, and an influential teacher at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music.
Hiroyuki Yamamoto is a contemporary Japanese composer.
Mark Kopytman was a composer, musicologist and pedagogue. He was a professor and a rector of the Rubin Academy, and a Laureate of the Serge Koussevitzky Prize for his composition Voices of Memory (1986). Awarded the title "People's Artist of Moldova" in (1992) by the Moldovan President for the creation of the first Moldovan National Opera «Casa mare».
Airat Rafailovich Ichmouratov born 28 June 1973, is a Volga Tatar born Russian / Canadian composer, conductor and klezmer clarinetist. He is a founding member and clarinetist of award-winning Montreal-based klezmer group Kleztory and invited professor at Laval University in Quebec, Canada.
The Shostakovich competition is a classical music contest in chamber music performance. The two editions of the competition were held in 2008 and 2010 in Moscow, Russia. The contest was open to the participants of all countries in two categories: chamber music ensembles and piano duets. The Shostakovich Chamber Music Competition continued the line of musical contests named after Shostakovich and dedicated to the chamber music: e.g. Shostakovich String Quartet Competition in Moscow.