About Arditti Quartet

The Arditti Quartet enjoys a worldwide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Several hundred string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974, and thus provided the ensemble with an established place in the recent history of music. 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 string quartets of many of the above and other composers.

The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpreting modern music and therefore attempts to co-operate with every composer whose works it plays.

The Arditti Quartet's extensive discography now features well over 170 CDs. The series presents numerous contemporary composer features as well as the first digital recordings of the complete Second Viennese School's string quartet music.

Over the past years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. They have won the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music in 1999 (Elliott Carter) and 2002 (Harrison Birtwistle). The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 – setting the quartet on par with other winners like Berio, Britten, Carter, Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, Ligeti and Rihm, whose works have been performed by the quartet.

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