Wihan Quartet

The Wihan Quartet has generated a reputation both because of its incisive interpretations of Czech repertory as well as the quartets of Beethoven. Certainly, it has attained broad worldwide acclaim for shows from the quartets of Dvorák, Smetana, and Janácek, aswell as those of modern Czech composers like Lubos Krticka and Jirí Pauer. But no composer has therefore highly captured its devotion as Beethoven: the Wihan players possess performed the complete routine of his quartets in concert many times and documented all 16 for the Nimbus label. However the group’s repertory can be hardly limited by Beethoven as well as the Czechs: they frequently play functions by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, and several contemporaries. Recordings possess appeared for the Nimbus label (including a Dvd movie featuring many concerts of Beethoven quartets) and Arco Diva. The Wihan Quartet was shaped in 1985 by Ales Kasprík, the ensemble’s cellist. He involved Leos Cepický (initial violin), Jan Schulmeister (second violin), and Jirí Zigmund (viola) to provide as the various other three members. During the formation, just Kasprík (b. 1962) and Schulmeister (b. 1964) had reached adulthood. The group cultivated its design and technique beneath the mentorship of Antonin Kohout, longtime cellist from the Smetana Quartet. In 2014, Zigmund made a decision to have a personal sabbatical; Jakub Cepický, Leos’ boy, filled his placement. The Wihan Quartet captured 1st prize in the 1991 London International String Quartet Competition and received other notable contests in its early years, like the Prague Springtime Event and Osaka Chamber Music Competition & Festa. From around enough time of the competition success in London, the outfit frequently started concertizing in the U.K. It ultimately became the quartet-in-residence at London’s Trinity University of Music but still retains that name. The group in addition has trained quartet playing at Pro Corda, Leiston Abbey, Suffolk. In 2000 the group’s first recordings made an appearance: the D minimal String Quartet, Intermezzo, and Italian Serenade of Hugo Wolf, as well as the Schoenberg quartet and Pfitzner Second Quartet, both released in the Arco Diva label. Both recordings had been critically acclaimed, the Wolf disk finding a Diapason Award. Through the entire early years of the brand new hundred years the Wihan Quartet was energetic in Czechoslovakia and throughout European countries, but increasingly therefore in England, not really least due to its quartet-in-residence position at Trinity University. From Oct 2007 to March 2008, the Wihan Quartet made an appearance in some concerts in Prague executing all of the Beethoven quartets. Nimbus Information documented those concerts and drew its acclaimed Beethoven quartet series from their website.