QUARTETTO DI CREMONA: preeminent string quartet of its generation

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Photo: Nikolaj Lund

Quartetto di Cremona (Italy)

Friends of Chamber Music presents Quartetto di Cremona, one of the world’s leading chamber groups of today, on Thursday, February 29 at 7 pm at A&M United Methodist Church in College Station in a FREE concert of music by Giacomo Puccini, Ottorino Respighi, and Franz Schubert. Immediately following performance, audience will have an opportunity to interact with the musicians of the quartet during Artist Forum.

This concert is FREE and open to everyone. Free parking is available at the church.

Hailing from Cremona, Italy—home to Stradivari, Guarneri, and members of the Rugeri and Amati families— Quartetto di Cremona is internationally acclaimed for their exquisite sound, striking cohesion, and expansive repertoire. Defined by the Gramophone Magazine as the ensemble that is “nothing less than life-affirming,” violinists Cristiano Gualco and Paolo Andreoli, violist Simone Gramaglia, and cellist Giovanni Scaglione made their Carnegie Hall debut in an impressive concert of significant repertoire in Carnegie Hall in NYC in October 2023. They will appear on the stage of the Lincoln Center in NYC a week after their concert in Friends of Chamber Music’s series.

Quartetto di Cremona was established in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona, Italy. Now in its 23rd season, Quartetto di Cremona has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia, appearing at leading festivals and performing regularly on radio and television broadcasts including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The ensemble’s extensive repertoire encompasses key classical masterworks, essential 19th- and 20th-century literature, and contemporary works. They are also known for their performances of Italian masters, including music by Verdi, Respighi, and Boccherini.

The quartet’s most recent album, Italian Postcards, features music inspired by Italy and written by non-Italian composers. Previous recordings include an all-Schubert album with cellist Eckart Runge and a complete set of quartets by Beethoven, in which several of the seven individual discs received immediate recognition upon their release in prior years, including a five-star rating in BBC Music Magazine, International Classical Music Awards, the Supersonic Award from the German magazine Pizzicato and the Echo Klassik 2017 prize. The quartet plans to release their recording of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue in 2024.

Awarded the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005, Quartetto di Cremona also received the prestigious Franco Buitoni Award in 2019 in recognition of its contribution to promoting and encouraging the development of chamber music in Italy and throughout the world.

The Kulturfond Peter Eckes provides the quartet’s musicians with three superb instruments made by the most esteemed string makers: a violin made by Paolo Antonio Testore, a viola by Gioachino Torazzi, and a cello by Dom Nicola Amati. Cristiano Gualco of the quartet plays his own violin by Nicola Amati (Cremona, 1640).

In 2015, the musicians of Quartetto di Cremona were awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Cremona.

The appearance of Quartetto di Cremona in Friends of Chamber Music’s series has been made possible by the generous support of the Season Sponsors of Friends of Chamber Music’s 2023-2024 concert series, Robin and Hays Glover, individual donations from patrons, and grants from the Arts Council of the Brazos Valley, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and several charitable trusts and foundations.