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Founded
in 1968 by four Cambridge undergraduates, the Fitzwilliam Quartet
first became well known through their close personal association
with Dmitri Shostakovich, who befriended them following a visit
to York to hear them play. He entrusted them with the Western
premières of his last three quartets, and before long
they had become the first ever group to perform and record all
fifteen. These recordings, which gained many international awards,
secured for them a world-wide concert schedule, and a long term
contract with Decca which culminated in a Beethoven cycle.
They
have been Quartet-in-Residence at the Universities of York and
Warwick, as well as Affiliate Artists at Bucknell University,
USA - resumed three years ago. A new Residency at Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge, began the previous March, with a similar
association now following at Bangor. They are one of the very
few string quartets in Britain using Classical instruments for
the appropriate repertoire, and perhaps unique in that they perform
on both historical and modern set-ups - sometimes within the
same concert! Their most recent BBC broadcasts have all been
on old instruments, including a live lunchtime concert at the
end of March.
The
Fitzwilliam was re-established in January 1996 with two younger
players, but with two members from the early seventies still
at the centre of the quartet. Their Wigmore Hall coffee concert
in July 1997 - afterwards described as "a triumphant return" -
resulted in two more engagements there during the Autumn, followed
by a series of three concerts last October and further appearances
this Spring - in association with the Cavatina Chamber Music
Scheme, of which they are members. They are once again appearing
regularly on the American concert scene, after a long absence.
Current
activities are centred round Shostakovich series, which began
last Spring and include London, Yorkshire, Warwick, Southampton,
Nottingham, and Cambridge. 2000/01 has also taken them to Switzerland,
Spain, back to the USA, and to Russia, where they played in Pushkin's
House in St. Petersburg, as well as at Agora - former home of
Modest Tchaikovsky, where his brother regularly stayed: their
'Green Room' was the room where the composer had breakfast with
Chekhov! Extraordinarily generous private patronage has enabled
them to make their comeback in the commercial recording studios:-
a new collaboration with Linn Records, which began in May 2000
with the Seven Last Words (recorded in Scotland and released
the following April). They have recently returned from their
first ever trip to South Africa, where they gave two concerts
in the National Arts Festival (the second largest in the world,
after Edinburgh) - including the world première of Michael
Blake's new quartet. 2002 takes them to Slovenia for the first
time, as well as return visits to the USA, Switzerland, and Russia.
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