Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stephan Heuberger & Matthias Pintscher
Biography Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stephan Heuberger & Matthias Pintscher
Arditti Quartet
enjoys a global reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Several hundred string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. These works have left a permanent mark on 20th century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. Such composers as Adès, Aperghis, Birtwistle, Cage, Carter, Dufourt, Dusapin, Fedele, Ferneyhough, Francesconi, Gubaidulina, Harvey, Hosokawa, Kagel, Kurtág, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Nancarrow, Rihm, Scelsi, Sciarrino and Stockhausen have entrusted the world premieres of their music to them, and the quartet’s repertoire comprises all of the string quartets of many of the above composers and others.
The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpreting modern music and therefore attempts to collaborate with every composer whose works it plays. Teaching for many years at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the players have given numerous master classes and workshops for young performers and composers all over the world.
The Arditti Quartet’s extensive discography now features well over 200 CDs. 42 discs have so far been released as part of the ensemble’s continuing series on the French label Naïve Montaigne alone. The series presents numerous contemporary composer features as well as the first digital recordings of the complete Second Viennese School’s string quartet music. Renowned for recording many composers’ works in their presence, the quartet recorded the complete quartets of Luciano Berio shortly before his death. Legendary episodes in recent music history have also been immortalised on CD such as the ensemble’s recording of Stockhausen’s spectacular Helicopter Quartet.
Over the past 40 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. It has won the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music in 1999 (Elliott Carter), 2002 (Harrison Birtwistle) and 2018 (Pascal Dusapin). The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 for lifetime achievement in music, setting the quartet on a par with other winners such as Berio, Britten, Carter, Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, Ligeti and Rihm.
At the beginning of 2020, two world premieres were scheduled for the Paris String Quartet Biennale: 93-year-old Betsy Jolas and 35-year-old Christian Mason have dedicated new works to the quartet. In February, the ensemble again performed as a soloist with orchestra and gave the first performance of a new work by Turgut Ercetin with the SWR Symphony Orchestra and Michael Wendeberg.
In summer 2020, the Arditti Quartet was touring Germany with concerts and workshops for young composers and performers with stops in Dresden, Eisenach, Frankfurt, Bad Homburg and Weingarten.
The 20/21 season kicked off with concerts at the Berner Musikfestival. In October, the Arditti Quartet was invited to the Berlin Philharmonie to present the German Premiere of Betsy Jolas’s Topeng and the World Premiere of Tansy Davies’s Nightingale: Ultra Deep Field.
Matthias Pintscher
is the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the world’s leading contemporary music ensemble founded by Pierre Boulez. In addition to a robust concert season in Paris, he tours extensively with the orchestra throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. In the 2020/21 season, Pintscher also begins a three-season appointment as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s new Creative Partner. Known equally as one of today’s foremost composers, Pintscher’s works are frequently commissioned and performed by major international orchestras.
In the 2020/21 season, Matthias Pintscher will lead a new production of Lohengrin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin directed by Calixto Bieito, and returns in the spring to also conduct Wozzeck. He makes debuts with the Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, and Barcelona Symphony. Return invitations this season include the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Detroit, and San Diego; New World Symphony in Miami, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. With the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pintscher will perform concerts in Paris and Berlin, including a semi-staged multimedia presentation of Olga Neuwirth’s The Outcast, as well as a number of new work commissions.
In summer 2020, Matthias Pintscher served as Music Director of the 74th Ojai Music Festival. Highlights of the 2019/20 season included his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s new opera Orlando, and debuts with the Montreal, Pittsburgh, Houston, and Baltimore symphonies. He also conducted the premiere of his new work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, performed by Georg Nigl and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks at the Musica Viva festival in February 2020.
Pintscher has held many titled positions, most recently as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Association for nine seasons. In 2018/19, he served as the Season Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, as well as Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. An enthusiastic supporter of and mentor to students and young musicians, Pintscher was Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra from 2016-2018 and has worked with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Matthias Pintscher began his musical training in conducting, studying with Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös in his early twenties, during which time composing soon took a more prominent role in his life. He rapidly gained critical acclaim in both areas of activity, and continues to compose in addition to his conducting career. A prolific composer, Pintscher's music is championed by some of today's finest performing artists, orchestras, and conductors. His works have been performed by such orchestras as the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, among many others. He is published exclusively by Bärenreiter, and recordings of his works can be found on Kairos, EMI, Teldec, Wergo, and Winter & Winter. Matthias Pintscher has been on the composition faculty of the Juilliard School since 2014.
