Presenting an incredible series of concerts ranging from classical to contemporary music, the Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam punches well above its weight to the delight of its admiring international audience

Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam (Photo: Marco van Es)

Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam; Muziekgebouw Amsterdam
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 26-28 January 2026

The swishy, comfortable and ultra-modern Muziekgebouw Amsterdam provided the perfect setting for the 5th edition of the Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam held over the course of eight action-packed days with concerts taking place from early morning to late evening featuring some of the world’s most renowned quartets while highlighting emerging young talent pushing the next generation forward

The Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam, a pretty impressive and world-beating event, features a host of international ensembles of the likes of the Belcea Quartet, ADAM Quartet, Cuarteto Casals, Engegard Quartet, Quatuor Ebene, Quatuor Arod, Malion Quartett, Chiaroscuro Quartet, Maxwell Quartet, Barbican Quartet, Pavel Haas Quartet, Quatuor Van Kuijk, PUBLIQuartet, Marmen Quartet, Leonkoro Quartet, Animato Kwartet, Belinfante Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Signum Quartet, Chaos String Quartet and North Sea String Quartet as well as String Quartet Competition winners from Trondheim, London and Banff.

Overall, the festival featured four Dutch premières by David Lang, Brett Dean, Denise Onen and Dizu Plaatjies and also presented twelve other world premières by Samuel Adams, Richard Ayres, Alexander Raskatov, Mathilde Wantenaar, Boris Bezemer, Eleanor Alberga, Primo Ish-Hurwitz, Vinthya Perinpanathan, Frieda Gustavs, Hanna Kulenty, Aftab Darvishi, Jan-Peter de Graaff while special guests included Elisabeth Hetherington (soprano), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Klaus Makela (cello), DIzu Plaatjies (African instruments), Ales Brezina (musicologist), Olga Pashchenko (fortepiano), Olli Mustonen (piano), Khorshid Dadbeh (tanbur), DOMNIQ (percussion), Ariane Schluter (actress), Julian Steckel (cello), Bruno Monsaingeon (documentary film director), Takehiro Konoe (viola), Naomi Shaham (double-bass), Katy Hamilton (presenter). What a tally!

Animato Kwartet with Khorshid Dadbeh (Photo: Juri Hiensch)

All the concerts took place at the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, commissioned and funded by the city of Amsterdam in the eastern docklands as opposed to the historic Concertgebouw of 1888 which was funded by six prominent Amsterdam citizens to build a world-class concert hall to elevate and enhance the city’s cultural life.

Therefore, the Muziekgebouw complements so well its larger and mature neighbour while providing the perfect venue for the Strijkkwartet Biënnale founded by Yasmin Hilberdink in 2018. She established the festival based on years of experience in organizing chamber-music concerts at the Concertgebouw to create a more vibrant and spontaneous environment in which string quartets can healthily thrive.

Gracing the banks of the river IJ, the Muziekgebouw, designed by the esteemed Danish architectural firm, 3XN, emphasizes openness with its expansive glass façade inviting sunlight to penetrate the building’s interior thus creating a connection to the surrounding harbour and well beyond.

125 years young: Wigmore Hall celebrates its anniversary with two weeks of goodies from Igor Levit & Lisa Davidsen to Rhiannon Giddens & Stockhausen's Stimmung

Foyer of Wigmore Hall in 1901 when it was Bechstein Hall (Photo courtesy of Wigmore Hall)

Like many major cities, London's concert halls are largely recent phenomenon and old halls have had a habit of disappearing. Kingsway Hall (beloved of recording companies) was deemed unsafe and demolished in the 1990s, Aeolian Hall still exists but is now Sotheby's in Bond Street, whilst the Queen's Hall in Langham Place was demolished thanks to bomb damage. But there is one hall that has stuck it out and, in terms of ambience and sound, remains thankfully unchanged. This is Wigmore Hall. 

Opened as Bechstein Hall in 1901, the venue is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.  The building was designed by Thomas Collcutt (whose other buildings included the Palace Theatre and Lloyd's  Register of Shipping) for piano manufacturers Bechstein to showcase their pianos, and the interior still features the mural The Soul of Music in the cupola, designed by painter and muralist Gerald Moira, as striking then as it is today.

The opening concert was on 31 May 1901, and to celebrate Wigmore Hall is having a 125th anniversary festival from 25 May to 7 June, full of all sorts of goodies. Things kick off at lunchtime on 25 May when the Modigliani Quartet joins forces with the Leonkoro Quartet, winner of the 2022 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, for Mendelssohn's Octet. The festival closes with violinist Christian Tetzlaff celebrating his 60th birthday with unaccompanied Bach, the Six Sonatas and Partitas.

There will be the launch of Julia Boyd's book, There is Sweet Music Here, celebrating 125 years of the Hall. On 31 May 1901, the opening concert featured Busoni, Ysaye and other distinguished soloists in a programme of Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, Schumann, Brahms and more. A gala concert with Thomas Adès (piano), Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cedric Tiberghien (piano), Louise Alder (soprano) and Joseph Middleton (piano) will reproduce many of the elements from that first concert, missing out the songs by Delayre, Wekerlin and Auber and adding music by Thomas Adès.

Soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist James Baillieu will be giving an all-Schubert recital on the very day of the anniversary. Another anniversary gala, the day after, features pianist Igor Levit in Ravel's Kaddisch, Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor and Liszt's Après une lecture du Dante 'Fantasia quasi Sonata'. And soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist Joseph Middleton will be exploring songs from 1901, the year the hall was born, from Bonis, Hahn and Massenet to Strauss and Schoenberg, plus Mahler, Debussy and Charles Bordes.

The festival features two grand old men of Early Music. Jordi Savall directs his ensemble Hesperion XXI and singers from La Capella Reial de Catalunya in a programme of Monteverdi and his contemporaries, whilst William Christie directs Les Arts Florissants in Handel's Acis and Galatea.

Soprano Asmik Grigorian and pianist Lukas Geniusas create a programme that begins with Rachmaninov's Vocalise and explores that genre ending with Strauss's Four Last Songs. Baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber's programme centres around Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Piotr Anderszewski will be performing two great Schumann cycles, Dichterliebe and Liederkreis Op. 24

The pianistic line-up also includes Alexandre Kantorow [whom we heard last month in recital in Lucerne, see my review] in Liszt, Medtner, Chopin and Beethoven; Yunchan Lim, the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn Competition in 2022, in fantasies by Chopin, Schumann and Schubert; Angela Hewitt in Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert; and Lukas Sternath in Liszt and Schubert  

Pianist Igor Levit also joins the Leonkoro Quartet for two programmes which include Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.24 and Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat, Op.44, whilst violist Tabea Zimmermann joins the Belcea Quartet for quintets by Mozart and Brahms.

London Voices, which was founded back in 1973 by Terry Edwards and which is now directed by Ben Parry, will perform Stockhausen's classic Stimmung. Vocalist Elaine Michener joins lutenist Elizabeth Kenny for a programme that mixes Dowland, Strozzi and Robert Johnson with Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell and Robert Johnson the Blues maestro. Other guests at the festival include singer, composer, fiddle player and banjo virtuoso Rhiannon Giddens, and cellist Abel Selaochoe and his Bantu Ensemble

Full details from Wigmore Hall's website.

Creating places to explore contemporary music: Standard Issue helps launch prx.live, new venture from contemporary music magazine PRXLUDES

Standard Issue

PRXLUDES is an online contemporary music magazine that sees its work as serving as a public platform where emerging and early-career composers can showcase their work. Now they are going live with prx.live part live gig, part conversation, part social gathering. The launch is on 5 February 2026 at Folklore, Hoxton in partnership with the ensemble Standard Issue and production partners, Stomping Ground.

I chatted to Standard Issue's artistic director Michelle Hromin (clarinets) and creative director Tilly Coulton (flutes) to find out more about the ensemble and their plans for prx.live. Standard Issue is a contemporary music collective with a Pierrot ensemble at its core. They want to bring the best of music to the community. They perform mainly living composers and are interested in creating places to explore contemporary music in different ways, making inclusive and accepting spaces for new music. Their repertoire is a mix from contemporary classical to ambient drone to avant-garde. Repertoire is decided in various ways, Michelle Tilly are involved along with members of the ensemble, but sometimes composers make suggestions, and they are intrigued by the ideas.

Rather than simply playing pieces, Standard Issue wants to create a social gathering around music, so that people can talk about music. Events are not just concerts, audience members can meet new people and connect with other musicians. They want the audience to feel part of a collaborative process by opening a dialogue with the audience, what the audience liked and disliked, explaining what Standard Issue's process was like.

For the prx.live launch, Standard Issue will be performing Ipod Variations by Iranian-American composer Kian Ravei, Soundclash by London-based composer, producer and DJ Blasio Kavuma, Skew by Holly Gowland, a composer/sound artist from Manchester who is studying for her PhD at University of Birmingham, Heartstrings by composer and vocalist Rylan Gleave, The Wooden Web by Scottish composer, arranger and podcaster Aileen Sweeney and a new commission, supported by Vaughan Williams Foundation, Snow Sprites by Millicent B James. The evening will include an introduction from Zygmund de Somogyi, artistic director of PRXLUDES, as well as conversations with the composers about their process, then after the talking and the music there will be a social gathering.

Tilly and Michelle both studied at the Royal College of Music (RCM) where Michelle curated a concert featuring music by women composers as part of the RCM's Music and Migration series. Chatting together after the event, they realised that they shared a love of new music, of working with composers and wanted to do more working with people that they knew. From there the suggestion of making it a group was the next step. The launch concert was in 2022, creating a space for them to come together performing contemporary and experimental music.

Further details and tickets for prx.live from Dice.