The Tokyo String Quartet has captivated audiences and critics alike since it was founded more than 30 years ago. Regarded as one of the supreme chamber ensembles of the world, the Tokyo Quartet-Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda (violins), Kazuhide Isomura (viola) and Clive Greensmith (cello)-has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists and composers, built a comprehensive catalogue of critically acclaimed recordings and established a distinguished teaching record. Performing over a hundred concerts worldwide each season, the Tokyo String Quartet has a devoted international following that includes the major capitals of the world and extends to all four corners, from Australia to Estonia to Scandinavia and the Far East. Since it was founded, the Quartet has appeared nearly every year on the HFM series.

Officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music, the quartet traces its origins to the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members were profoundly influenced by Professor Hideo Saito. Soon after its creation, the quartet won First Prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. An exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon firmly established it as one of the world's leading quartets, and it has since released more than 40 landmark recordings. The ensemble now records on the Harmonia Mundi label.

The members of the Tokyo String Quartet have served on the faculty of the Yale School of Music as quartet-in-residence since 1976. Deeply committed to coaching young string quartets, they devote much of the summer to teaching and performing at the prestigious Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. They also conduct master classes in North America, Europe and the Far East throughout the year.

The ensemble performs on the "Paganini Quartet", a group of renowned Stradivarius instruments named for legendary virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who acquired and played them during the 19th century. The instruments have been on loan to the ensemble from the Nippon Music Foundation since 1995, when they were purchased from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Trio con Brio Copenhagen - the Korean sisters Soo-Jin Hong and Soo-Kyung Hong and the Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer—was the recipient of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award in 2005. This biennial award, one of the most coveted in the world of chamber music, honors in perpetuity the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio by encouraging and enhancing the career of an extraordinarily accomplished “rising” piano trio. The prize carries with it appearances on twenty major concert series across the USA including New York City’s Carnegie Hall; Trio con Brio Copenhagen was nominated for the award by the Alban Berg Quartet and chosen by members of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio as well as the eminent musicians Claude Frank (pianist), Michael Tree (violist of the Guarneri Quartet), and Peter Wiley (former cellist of the Beaux Arts Trio).

Gramophone Magazine wrote of the trio’s début CD: “it’s easy to see what so impressed the judges  . . . [the] performances can compete with the best available . . . airtight ensemble . . . a superb, greatly gifted chamber group.”

The trio was founded in Vienna in 1999 and first drew attention with a sensational performance that took the highest prize at Germany’s prestigious ARD-Munich Competition in 2002.  Since then, they won first prize in several more competitions: Italy’s Premio Vittorio Gui (Florence, 2003), Norway’s Trondheim Chamber Music Competition (2003), and the Danish Radio Competition (Copenhagen, 2002). They also won the “Allianz-Preis” for Best Ensemble in Germany's Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (2003) and second prize in the Vienna Haydn Competition (2001) and the Premio Trio di Trieste (Italy, 2002). Critics have praised the trio for their “sparkling joie de vivre” and “magic dialogue;”—a review of their performance at the Salzburg Mozarteum said, “they cast a spell over their audience . . . so alive, so musical . . . ravishing.” Trio con Brio Copenhagen belongs unquestionably to the upper echelons of young chamber ensembles performing today.

Trio con Brio Copenhagen’s busy schedule includes major concert halls in Europe, USA and Asia, such as Tivoli Concert Hall (Copenhagen), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Carnegie Hall (New York City), the Berlin Konzert­haus; the Mozart-Saal (Vienna), Herkulessaal (Munich), Beethoven-Haus (Bonn), the Musikhalle (Hamburg), the Mozarteum (Salzburg), the Seoul and Sejong Arts Centers (Korea), Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo), Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza, Italy), the Båstad Chamber Music Festival (Sweden), and the Bergen and Trondheim Chamber Music Festivals (Norway).

In 2003 Trio con Brio Copenhagen performed all the Beethoven piano trios in a cycle of three concerts at the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen with great success. The trio was ”Ensemble in Residence” in Copenhagen’s Rundetaarn (Round Tower), with five sold-out concerts in 2005 broadcast on the European Broadcasting Union and Danish Radio. The trio has also broadcast on the BBC, Korean Broadcasting Systems, Norwegian Radio, Swedish Radio, Radiotelevisione Italiana, and on the major German networks (ARD, NDR, Hessischer Rundfunk and Radio Berlin).

Trio con Brio Copenhagen is frequently featured as the soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with orchestras such as the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR, the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre Syrinx (France), and the Prime Philharmonic Orchestra (Korea).

Concertante has acquired a sheen, warmth, and polish that are the hallmark of superb chamber music groups. Comprised of a core of six virtuoso string players, the group performs in varied combinations of instrumentalists. As solo performers who have won major national and international music competitions, they have graced the premier stages of the world from New York's Carnegie Hall to London's Royal Festival Hall to Shanghai's Grand Theatre. Concertante has performed a wide array of repertoire ranging from works by established masters to less commonly performed composers. The ensemble has an interest in furthering the cause of new music and last season launched a new series entitled One Plus Five, a series of six world premieres by Lowell Liebermann, Tigran Mansurian, Gabriela Frank, Shulamit Ran, Richard Danielpour, and Kevin Puts. In addition to the 06-07 season premieres of Liebermann’s Chamber Concerto No. 2 for Violin and String Quintet, and Mansurian’s Con Anima for String Sextet, Concertante has premiered the works of Jonathan Leshnoff, Josef Bardanashvili, Justine Chen, Tina Davison, Steven R. Gerber, David Ludwig, Jan Radzynski, Sheila Silver, and Oded Zehavi. It has also offered infrequently performed chamber works by such celebrated composers as Enesco, John Adams, Schoenberg, Martinu and Schulhoff. As an ensemble, Concertante has performed across America, gathering rave reviews from such publications as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, and appearing on Minnesota Public Radio's St. Paul Sunday. Concertante performs regularly at Merkin Hall in New York City and at Rose Lehrman Arts Center in Harrisburg, PA.

Cantus will appear for the first time in Houston on Tuesday, February 12.  Founded ten years ago by alumni of Minnesota’s St. Olaf College Choir, this group has a unique sound, grounded in a rich northern European and Midwest American Lutheran choral tradition. The style contrasts with that of the King’s Singers or Chanticleer and is important to be heard.  After a concert last year in Temple, Texas, the head of the chamber music society wrote us the following e mail:  “Cantus is art.  Their purity of tone, blending of timbre and mastery in expression through all the various technics of vocal artistry produced a masterpiece in each song.”  Cantus also has a unique approach to repertoire, presenting works that range from Tallis to contemporary works written for them, and including Indian ragas and Motown. 

The Florestan Trio (Tuesday, March 11) takes its name from one of two personae – the impetuous, exciting and joyous one – by which Robert Schumann characterized himself in his journals.  This English trio has received countless awards, including the Gramophone Award for a CD of Schumann’s trios and a nomination for a Gramophone Award for every other CD they have made! They celebrated their tenth anniversary season with the completion of their Beethoven recording cycle for Hyperion, and with three sold-out performances of the Beethoven Trios in London’s Wigmore Hall, for which the London Sunday Times called them, “Perhaps the finest contemporary exponents of this repertoire performing on modern instruments today.” Of their release of the Mendelssohn piano trios, the New York Times stated, “The Florestan were born to play these works.”  This will be the Florestan’s first performance in Houston.

 

The relatively young Belcea String Quartet appears for the first time on the HFM series, Tuesday, April 8.  Last year, Michelle Dulak Thomson, the string player-turned reviewer from San Francisco, wrote: “It would be difficult to improve on the Belcea’s Mozart.  They are not an ordinary competition-circuit quartet. For one thing, they put much more thought and effort into articulation than they do into pouring out sound… Leader Corina Belcea … embodies the [tone] ... Her alert, zesty, occasionally impetuous style is the style of her three comrades-in-arms. And everything they do, they seem to do with one mind, not because of obsessive rehearsing but just because they all want the same thing.”