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| 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!
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| 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.
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| Cuarteto Casals. (Photo: Rob van Dam Photo) |
Three distinctive performance spaces are wrapped up in the Muziekgebouw: a multifunction main auditorium seating 800 to 1000, the intimate BIMhuis, especially designed for jazz and improvised music presentations seating 350 to 400 while a smaller 100-seat venue is ideal for small gatherings and educational purposes.
Cutting-edge acoustic technology, providing optimal-sound transmission, is most certainly at the forefront of its design. For instance, the Grand Hall enjoys unparalleled flexibility and features movable walls, floors and ceilings thereby allowing for rapid reconfiguration of the hall at ‘a touch of a button’ thus making it suitable for a wide range of musical genres ranging from string quartets to symphony orchestras.
To ensure superior acoustics, the main hall is a sealed concrete-box shell - a box within a box built inside the larger building - thereby providing sound insulation from the outside world not too dissimilar to the construction of the auditorium of London’s Royal Festival Hall. But the outside world jumps immediately into view from the Muziekgebouw’s public spaces offering a wonderful, breathtaking, panoramic skyline thereby making a dramatic waterfront statement.
Three primary colours, natural concrete, black and light maple wood, cover the floor area and the slatted wooden panelling of the main auditorium shielding and adorning the concrete-constructed shell totally enhances performances while the ever-changing, pastel-coloured lighting scenario adds to the overall pleasure and enjoyment of attending a concert at the Muziekgebouw.
Highly acclaimed Dutch violinist, Liza Ferschtman - who performs on many of the world’s leading stages and has directed the Delft Chamber Music Festival since 2007 - not only loudly applauds the festival but waxes lyrical about the Muziekgebouw, too, where she has given countless concerts both as soloist or with a quartet or orchestra.
‘The building is simply beautiful from the moment you step inside it,’ she emphatically says. ‘It’s a refreshing and relaxing environment in which to perform and, indeed, to hear music. I particularly admire the view of Amsterdam from the Muziekgebouw especially at sunset - it’s breathtaking to say the least.’
Ms Ferschtman further added: ‘I always admire the hall’s interior. The slatted wooden-panelled walls, for instance, add more than a touch of warmth and atmosphere to the overall quality of the hall’s environment and, indeed, the pleasure of attending a concert at the venue while the brilliant acoustics remain the most important thing to me as a musician because they can be adapted to the type of music being performed - and that’s unique and truly amazing. A versatile venue, too, it can accommodate a wide range of musical performances: the Grote Zaal is exceptional and can be rearranged to create a variety of different configurations and as the hall is a comfortable and intimate size you never feel that you’re wallowing in a sea of space.’
Since its opening in summer 2005, the Muziekgebouw has become a popular meeting-place for both locals and visitors alike but over the course of eight precious, creative and exciting days in the month of January, the Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam (SQBA) - the world’s largest string quartet festival celebrating its 5th edition this year - takes over the whole shooting-match while attracting in excess of 10,000 aficionados of the string quartet genre to enjoy a host of carefully-curated programmes harbouring the most cherished classics of the string quartet repertoire peppered with a few hidden gems here and there for good measure.
This year’s festival witnessed over 50 concerts as well as a series of talks, masterclasses and so forth while a host of young fledgling string quartets offered pre-show entertainment in the expansive and relaxing public space of the Muziekgebouw thus creating a nice, friendly and convivial atmosphere to get things off to a good start that festivalgoers lapped up mostly with a glass of wine in their hand!
A new initiative this year ushered in the ‘super romantic morning concert’ series starting at 9.30am (Cor blimey, Mary Poppins, too early for me!) featuring quartets by Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms with coffee talks, hosted by BBC journalist, Katy Hamilton and the ‘afternoon extending string quartet’ series exploring the boundaries of the string quartet genre.
As the day unfolds, a different quartet shares their personal favourites in a series of casual-style late afternoon concerts entitled ‘Selected by . . .’ while all the main evening concerts feature an array of exciting international string quartets and a ‘classic’ late-night event witnesses world-renowned ensembles performing Beethoven.
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| Chiaroscuro Quartet with Olga Pashchenko (Photo: Juri Hiensch) |
Therefore, for my late-night treat I was in the company of the Chiaroscuro Quartet (Alina Ibragimova / Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, violins; Emilie Hörnlund, viola; Claire Thirion, cello) playing a rare work by the famed 16th-century Dutch composer/organist, Jan Sweelinck Chromatische Fantasie and Beethoven’s String Quartet No.12 in E flat major, Op.127 - the ‘first’ of his late quartets.
They presented a further concert teaming up with fortepianist, Olga Pashchenko, performing a delightful and entertaining programme opening with a trio of Purcell’s Fantasies and continuing with a trio of works by Mozart: Fantasie KV 396 and Piano Concertos 12 and 14 with members of this fine quartet offering authenticity in their presentation by performing on gut-strings using historical bows.
However, I was particularly taken by the ‘young bloods’ of the Netherlands-based Animato Kwartet comprising Inga Våga Gaustad, Tim Brackman, Elisa Karen Tavenier, Pieter de Koe. Founded in 2013, the members of this ‘progressive’ quartet are most certainly an energetic and driving bunch of musicians widely considered to be one of the most promising of their kind knocking round the Netherlands today.
And with acclaimed Kurdish soloist, Khorshid Dadbeh, they excelled themselves playing a brand-new work for string quartet and tanbur by Iranian-Dutch composer, Aftab Darvishi, who graduated from the University of Tehran in 2010 and later earned a master’s degree in composing for film from the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam under the guidance of Jurre Haanstra in 2012.
She also studied Karnatic music with Rafael Reina, the classical music tradition of southern India known for its complex melodies (ragas) and rhythms (talas) with a strong emphasis on vocal performance, improvisation and devotional compositions primarily in Sanskrit and Telugu. Darvishi completed her composition studies with Martijn Padding and Yannis Kyriakides at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 2015.
A symbol of Iran’s rich musical heritage and more than a thousand years old, the tanbur is a stringed instrument with deep, historical roots in Iran and has evolved over the centuries with variations in design and playing techniques. Open to experimentation, Dadbeh enjoys improvisation, therefore this made her the perfect tanbur player for Darvishi’s new work where her improvisation skills came to the fore.
Presenting her music at various festivals in Europe, the United States and Asia, Darvishi works with multiple ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, Hermes Ensemble, Orkest De Ereprijs, Riccioti Ensemble, Oerknal Ensemble, Ragazze Quartet, Phion Orchestra, Cappella Amsterdam, BBC Singers and Doelen Ensemble. She has also participated in the 20th Young Composers’ Meeting at Apeldoorn, Netherlands in 2014 and a year later at the Holland Festival.
The mature prize-winning quartet, Cuarteto Casals (Abel Tomàs, Vera Martínez Mehner, Cristina Cordero, Arnau Tomàs) founded in 1997 at the Escuela Reina Sofía, Madrid, have played many of the world’s prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie Berlin, Cité de la Musique Paris, Philharmonie Paris, Konzerthaus, Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and now, of course, the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam. They offered intelligent readings of Shostakovich’s first three string quartets which established the composer’s deeply contemplative and haunting style thereby defining his chamber music legacy.
The first quartet, a delightful naive piece, full of joie de vivre, gave way to the wartime strain and tension of the second while the third, more profound and emotionally charged, evoked the senses in an intense and deeply felt performance with the final charge coming in the ‘scherzo’ furiously and remarkably played wowing an admiring house.
And so did the Czech-based Pavel Haas Quartet (Veronika Jarůšková, Marek Zwiebel, Šimon Truszka, Peter Jarůšek) founded in 2002 and named in honour of Czech composer, Pavel Haas (21 June 1899-17 October 1944) murdered by the Nazis.
Founded by Jarůšková after she attended a concert by the Škampa Quartet in which her husband, Peter Jarůšek, was the cellist, the quartet played to their hearts’ content delivering a lovely trio of works by Dvořák comprising Cypresses Nos. 1, 6, 12 and quartets 11 and 14 - a refreshing change from the ‘American’ quartet!
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| ADAM Quartet with Elisabeth Hetherington (Photo: Rob van Dam Photo) |
An award-winning ensemble, their début album, featuring quartets by Pavel Haas and Leoš Janáček, received the 2007 Gramophone award for Chamber Music while in 2011 their recording of Dvořák’s String Quartets Op.106 and Op.96 won Gramophone’s ‘Recording of the Year’ award - the publication’s highest accolade.
A staggering programme was gifted and well-performed, too, by the ADAM Quartet featuring Canadian-born soprano Elisabeth Hetherington (now residing in the Netherlands) who has earned a formidable reputation as an interpreter of early, contemporary and the modern repertoire thereby harbouring a passionate advocate for multidisciplinary performances and, therefore, a perfect choice for Boris Peters and Vinthya Perinpanathan’s new interdisciplinary work Future Echoes receiving its world première and one of the highlights from my perspective of this year’s Strijkkwartet Biënnale.
This creative deuce skilfully delivered an all-encompassing work based round the four movements of Schönberg’s String Quartet No.2 in F sharp minor, a pivotal transitional work by this avant-garde composer who revolutionized 20th-century music by breaking with traditional tonality by developing free atonality and the twelve-tone technique. Moving from late romantic tonality to atonality, the first two movements of Schönberg’s second string quartet feature a setting of two poems by German symbolist poet, Stefan George, ‘Litanei’ (Litany) and ‘Entrückung’ (Rapture), sung by a soprano exploring themes of pain, loss and spiritual transcendence.
Within Peters/Perinpanathan’s realization of Future Echoes the past, present and future came together in a fusion of music, light and design comprising a series of intriguing slow-motion video-projected patterns of grey and muted colours morphing into shades of pale green juxtaposed with fragmented abstract images of nature, the animal kingdom and the cosmos.
The opening and closing pieces relate to Orlando di Lasso’s Musica, dei donum optimi and Vide homo, published during the year of the composer’s death in 1594, tenderly and so emotionally sung by Elisabeth Hetherington. And in the context of the theme of this concert, the past was represented by Lasso’s pieces, the present by Schönberg’s string quartet and the future by Perinpanathan’s new piece, Her Resistance for string quartet and soprano, which nevertheless utilised Schonberg’s pioneering notes.
Other works contained within this sublime, totally captivating and convincing concert comprised Vincenzo Galilei/Domenico Ferrabosco’s Io mi son giovinetta; Vincenzo Galilei/Cipriano de Rore’s Ancor che col partire; Vincenzo Galilei/Alessandro Striggio’s Fuggie speme mia and a further work by Orlando di Lasso entitled Aurora lucis rutilat.
Formed in 2013, the renowned French quartet, Quatuor Arod (Jordan Victoria, Alexandre Vu, Tanguy Parisot, Jérémy Garbarg) delivered an inspiring concert topped by Alexander Raskatov’s new piece, OASIA. The inspiration for Raskatov writing the work came from Russian-born poet/playwright, Velimir Khelebnikov (1885-1922) who, incidentally, played a central part in the Russian Futurist movement, wrote the poem, O, Asia.
Written in seven relatively short movements, the work symbolizes universal unity and employs the use of ‘campana di chiesa’ (church bell) played at the discretion of the players without strict adherence to the tempo or rhythm of the rest of the piece. Therefore, the three distinctive bell chimes heard in the closing bars added an extra dimension to the majesty and spiritual aspect of the work.
The first movement represents the emergence of the sound of space, the second hints at a sort of incantation, a certain ‘shamanism’ while the third alludes to the slow movement of Shostakovich 9th symphony and the fourth infuses the patterns of two ancient cultures ranging from old synagogue liturgy to the Slavonic liturgical chant of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Employing the ritual of ‘shaman’ engulfs the fifth movement while the sixth spins round the idea of time which exists in many of the composer’s works with the seventh witnessing a divided quartet duetting an ancient type of orientalism with the viola part recalling an old tune known to the inhabitants of the Arctic (an area that the composer explored in his early travels) to express the common spirit of ancient musical cultures.
However, one was back on familiar territory with the Barbican Quartet (Amarins Wierdsma, Kate Maloney, Christoph Slenczka, Yoanna Prodanova) who offered a brilliant account of Szymanowski String Quartet No.1 while their approach to Ravel’s String Quartet in F major, dating from 1903, a work influenced by Debussy, perfectly hit the mark.
Composed when Ravel was 28, the quartet’s a youthful and exuberant work conjuring up a shimmering impressionistic canvas within a classical structure and peppered with innovative, rhythmic and luminous textures here and there, makes this work so appealing. Renowned for its innovative use of string textures, the score shifts between lush romantic and lyrical melodies in which the Barbican Quartet clearly brought out in an impeccable and flawless performance, especially in the spirited and exhilarating last movement, which more than marked and stamped the Barbican’s interpretation of this fine and appealing quartet which, I feel, could not be bettered but only equalled.
And how nice it was to hear a rare performance of Rebecca Clarke’s Poem for String Quartet, a short, seven-minute, lyrical, haunting piece, featuring a sombre, emotional and beautiful melody admirably played to the delight of a discerning and appreciative house. Along with Comodo e amabile (Comfortable and amiable) the piece was rediscovered in the 1990s.
As an aside, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) knew and worked with Ravel and performed his music working under his direction during a visit he made to England in 1928. Therefore, how appropriate it was to include her piece in the Barbican Quartet’s well-planned programme.
However, my time in Amsterdam was strictly limited. Just three days. But in that short space of time, I got stuck in and took in what I could manage on my first visit to the Strijkkwartet Biënnale. Every concert I attended was a world-class event but the reading, scintillating and exciting performance of Shostakovich’s 9th string quartet by the Frankfurt-based Malion Quartet, formed in 2018, comprising Alex Jussow, Miki Nagahara, Lilya Tymchyshyn, Bettina Kessler, was nothing but brilliant especially by the concentrated and exceptional playing of the frantic and exciting ‘hell-for-leather’ finale. It had the house standing. Bravo!
Book the date: Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam 2028 - 29th January to 5th February.
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