Embark on a musical odyssey with Quatuor Ébène as they blend classical chamber music with the vibrant tones of Scottish folk. This unique collaboration with Scottish harpist Catriona McKay and fiddler Chris Stout takes audiences on an enchanting journey across prestigious venues in Germany and the USA. Each concert offers a fresh perspective on the intersection of classical and folk music, drawing inspiration from the rugged landscapes of Scotland and the timeless works of Brahms, Beethoven, and Ravel. Join us as we explore this captivating fusion of genres.

Quatuor Ébène: A Harmonious Journey through Classical and Scottish Folk Music

In a celebration of musical diversity, Quatuor Ébène, known for their mastery of classical, jazz, and folk genres, embarks on an exciting European tour. Partnering with Scottish harpist Catriona McKay and fiddler Chris Stout, they explore and celebrate the vibrant world of Scottish folk music. With performances taking place across Germany and the United States, each event promises a unique blend of traditional and contemporary sounds that transcends musical boundaries, captivating audiences with its inventive spirit.

Quatuor Ébène: Bridging Classical and Folk Music Across Borders

Beethoven’s radical transformation of the string quartet as a genre for the expression of profound human emotions speaks with overwhelming force Quatuor Ébène’s programme. The French ensemble continues its Beethoven series at Wigmore Hall with the first of three works commissioned by Count Andreas Razumovsky in 1805, following its complex musical argument with the transcendental power of the composer’s Op. 130 with its original finale, the Everest-like ‘Great Fugue’.

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Quatuor Ébène

Wigmore Hall

Over the past two decades, French ensemble Quatuor Ébène has thrilled audiences with performances ranging from the complete Beethoven cycle to forays into Left Bank jazz. The ensemble’s telepathic understanding, artistic daring, and musical individuality make for edge-of-the-seat concert experiences, intensely focused and touched by visionary insights.

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

The string quartet is considered the pinnacle of chamber music – and we can experience why this is so at performances by the Quatuor Ébène: In around two decades, an ensemble has grown that not only plays in the premier league of international quartets, but also regularly leaves audiences breathless with its unconditional courage to take risks and the intensity of its interpretations. Even supposedly well-known repertoire sounds refreshingly new and excitingly different with the Quatuor Ébène. For example, Joseph Haydn, who is considered the inventor of the genre. The program features one of the Viennese classic's late quartets, the String Quartet in G major, Op. 76 No. 1, in which he bundled all his achievements in this field, as a kind of legacy. The bar was thus set high for subsequent generations of composers, a fact that Johannes Brahms also felt: he spent around 20 years exploring the genre before presenting his first quartets to the public with Opus 51. Framed by the two German-speaking composers, the only string quartet by the Frenchman Maurice Ravel can be heard, which is full of wonderful sound effects.

CityPalais

Chamber Concert Quatuor Ébène

Mozarteum Foundation

The string quartet – a purely classical-romantic affair? The members of the Quatuor Ébène were never convinced of this. The first jam sessions took place in their university's rehearsal room at the end of the 1990s. And it developed into much more than a bit of a diversion: improvising together on jazz standards and pop songs has become the trademark of the French quartet. Their award-winning recordings of great masterpieces of string quartet literature are now joined by albums that look far beyond the confines of classical music. And the four members of the Quatuor Ébène regularly bring performers from entirely different musical worlds on board. The quartet shares a close artistic friendship with Catriona McKay and Chris Stout. They first met the two Scots in 2012, and since then they have embarked on several joint journeys to the border regions of classical and folk music. In 2025 we will embark on the next exciting excursion.

Quatuor Ébène Catriona McKay, Celtic harp Chris Stout, fiddle

Evangelical Ring Church Congregation

The most famous of all string quartets is also celebrating an anniversary at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival—the 20th in fact! It has been an Ensemble Prize winner since 2005. Since then, between performances in Paris, New York, and London, it has regularly visited Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, delighting audiences. This year, the foursome will give free rein to their passion for music, together with two musical friends on fiddle and harp, because the Quatuor Ébène has fallen in love with Scottish folk!

Quatuor Ébène meets fiddle and harp

St. George's Church Parchim

Founded in 1999, the Quatuor Ébène is known for the virtuoso manner in which it straddles styles and genres. For its latest project, the adventurous string quartet has teamed up with two long-time musical friends: the harpist Catriona McKay and the fiddler Chris Stout, both embodying Scottish folk music in its vibrant and multi-faceted contemporary state. The program was developed and inspired by Fair Isle, the smallest, most remote and perhaps most beautiful of the Shetland Islands in Scotland’s high north, where the rugged, rocky landscape has shaped local culture and mentality. Together, the six musicians explore the sonic diversity of Scottish music, clothing existing melodies in new guises due to their typical yet atypical combination of instruments, and enriching it with new compositions of their own – a fascinating musical journey of discovery in which two sound worlds merge in music.

Stout — McKay — Quatuor Ébène

Palais im Großen Garten

For more than 20 years, the “superb and intensely focused” (The New York Times) Quatuor Ébène has been taking audiences on a remarkable journey of musical discovery. The French ensemble is known for both white-hot intensity and cultivating a striking palette of expressive colors through a fluid, organic sense of blend and balance. In its Cal Performances debut, the group plays Mozart’s ebullient Quartet No. 21 from his Prussian set; Grieg’s lone completed quartet, a work of striking originality and energy; and Schnittke’s kinetic and intense String Quartet No. 3 from 1983. “They appear to have thrown away the semantic rulebook to create fresh, compelling sound worlds from the roots up” (The Strad).

First Congregational Church

In Spring 2020, Quatuor Ébène launched its “Beethoven Around the World” project, recording Beethoven’s 16 string quartets in a worldwide project on six continents. With this complete recording, the four celebrated their 20th stage anniversary, which they then crowned with performances of the complete string quartet cycle in major European venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris and the Alte Oper Frankfurt and invitations from Carnegie Hall, the Verbier Festival, and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center

It's a rare ensemble that can play Haydn and Debussy with complete command and then shift gears to offer a jazz set of Miles Davis and Chick Corea with equal authority. But the versatile Ébène Quartet, from Paris, has made that its trademark, adding spice to a traditionally fusty corner of classical music. This complexity of their repertoire has been greeted enthusiastically by audiences and critics and made them one of Europe’s most sought-after ensembles

Ebene Quartet

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Talented Shepherd School students perform short musical excerpts and receive coaching from a distinguished guest in front of a live audience. 

Alice Pratt Brown Hall

Critics have written of Quatuor Ébène performances that it's hard to imagine "playing at once more diverse and more brilliant than this… the possibilities of a string quartet were shown to be boundless" (Bachtrack). "The superb and intensely focused" (New York Times) French ensemble makes its Baltimore Debut with Mozart and Schnittke, and Grief's only complete quartet, one of this most expressive and richly textured works.  

Quatuor Ébène, (Baltimore Debut)

Johns Hopkins University

When Quatuor Ébène performed at Carnegie Hall in 2022, critics described it as hard to imagine “string quartet playing at once more diverse and more brilliant than this … the possibilities of a string quartet were shown to be boundless” (Bachtrack). They return with a late Mozart string quartet written for the king of Prussia—a cellist, as one can surmise upon listening; the third and most succinct of Bartók’s six essential, game-changing quartets; and Grieg’s sole complete work for the genre, a richly textured journey that comprises the second half of the program.

Carnegie Hall

“We need the inspiration of the audience,” said cellist Raphaël Merlin of the esteemed <a>Quatuor Ébène</a>, which returns for its third performance with Coleman. These words were one of the central ideas of the <em>“Beethoven Around the World”</em> project, during which the quartet recorded Beethoven’s 16 string quartets on six continents between May 2019 and January 2020. These recordings were also part of the quartet’s 20th anniversary celebrations. Quatuor Ébène’s albums have received numerous awards, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and the Midem Classic Award.

California Institute of Technology

Although given the number three in the published edition of Beethoven’s Op. 18, it was in fact his first string quartet. Quatuor Ébène steps from the generally light-hearted work’s heavyweight finale into the introspective world of the ‘Serioso’ Quartet. The French ensemble, praised by BBC Music Magazine for the ‘joyous exhilaration and carefree abandon’ of its music making, turns finally to the second of Beethoven’s three ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets, a work of dark intimacy and fiery passions.

Quatuor Ébène launched its Beethoven odyssey at Wigmore Hall last season with four concerts. It concludes its exploration of the composer’s matchless cycle of string quartets by pairing the forward-looking Op. 18 No. 6 with the confessional intimacy and intensity of one of his greatest works. The String Quartet in A minor confronts the nature of existence to emerge as a hymn to the resilience of the human spirit.

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