Quartetto di Cremona
Cristiano Gualco, violin
Paolo Andreoli, violin
Simone Gramaglia, viola
Giovanni Scaglione, cello
“splendid balance, abundant colour and a relaxed mastery of all the musical elements.”
— The Strad
NOTE: no pre-concert talk
Hugo WOLF: Italian Serenade for String Quartet (1887)
Maurice RAVEL: String Quartet in F Major (1903)
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825)
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Winner of the 2019 Franco Buitoni Award, the Quartetto di Cremona is a preeminent quartet of its generation noted for its lustrous sound, refined musicianship, and stylistic versatility. The quartet was established in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona, Italy. Over the course of two decades, Quartetto di Cremona has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia, appeared at leading festivals, and performed regularly on radio and television broadcasts, including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Quartetto di Cremona’s extensive repertoire encompasses key masterworks from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; essential late-nineteenth and twentieth-century literature; contemporary works by Golijov, Lacheman, Fabio Vacchi, Silvia Colasanti, Nimrod Borenstein and Kalevi Aho. They are also known for their performances of work by Italian composers including Verdi, Respighi, and Boccherini.
In the 2022-23 season, Quartetto di Cremona embarks on two North American tours, in October and in February-March. They return to the Metropolitan Museum of New York on March 1 to perform a concert on four rare instruments from The Met’s permanent collection, including two from the famed Cremona workshop of Stradivari. North American performances include La Jolla, Santa Fe, Kingston, ON, Syracuse, Vancouver, Costa Mesa, CA and Ithaca, NY. The ensemble performs in summer festivals throughout Italy, Finland and Holland. This season’s European highlights include the world premiere of a quintet composed by and performed with clarinetist David Orlowsky at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg; a debut at The Hague as part of a tour of Holland; and concerts at prestigious venues across Italy. The quartet will also appear on tour in India.
Last season, Quartetto di Cremona made their Lincoln Center debut at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York; The Strad noted that the Quartet’s performance was “distinguished by splendid balance, abundant colour and a relaxed mastery of all the musical elements.” The program featured Prokofiev’s rarely performed first quartet; Schoenberg’s formidable Quartet No. 1, and Weber’s quintet with clarinetist David Shifrin. The ensemble also made debuts in Madrid and Linz, Austria.
In 2023, the Quartet plans to release their recording of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Their most recent recording is Italian Postcards, their debut on Avie Records, released in 2020, featuring music inspired by Italy and written by non-Italian composers, including the world premiere recording of Cieli d’Italia by Nimrod Borenstein. An all-Schubert disc was released in May 2019 on Audite featuring two of the composer’s masterpieces - String Quartet “Death & the Maiden” and String Quintet in C major, with cellist Eckart Runge. In July 2018, the German label Audite issued a box set of Quartetto di Cremona’s complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets, which includes the String Quintet in C major, Op. 29 with Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet. The first volume in the series, originally release in 2013, received widespread and immediate recognition, including a five-star rating in BBC Music Magazine and selection as album of the month by Fonoforum, the German journal. The last two discs earned International Classical Music Awards in 2018 and the seventh CD earned the Supersonic Award from the German magazine Pizzicato and the Echo Klassik 2017 prize.
Quartetto di Cremona leads a renowned string program, currently in its tenth year, for professional and advanced string quartets at the Accademia Walter Stauffer, which is now part of the new campus of the Stauffer String Center, which opened in October 2021. The quartet also conducts masterclasses while on tour throughout Europe and the United States. Awarded the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005, the Quartetto di Cremona is also the recipient of the second “Franco Buitoni Award” (2019), in recognition of its contribution to promoting and encouraging chamber music in Italy and throughout the world. The quartet is supported by the Kulturfond Peter Eckes which provides the musicians with three superb instruments: violin Paolo Antonio Testore, viola Gioachino Torazzi, cello Dom Nicola Amati. Cristiano Gualco plays his own violin Nicola Amati, Cremona 1640. In 2015, the musicians were awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Cremona.
Supporting Underwriters: Ellen and Irv Hockaday