WE ARE THE
LEIPZIG QUARTET

Since then, the ensemble has received numerous international honors and awards. In 1991, they won the prestigious international ARD competition in Munich and the Brüder Busch Prize. The following year the ensemble was awarded the Siemens Music Prize, and also received a scholarship from the Amadeus Scholarship Fund and the Stiftung Kulturfonds.

For more than 25 years, the ensemble arranged its own concert series “Pro Quatuor” in Leipzig. In addition, they are regularly invited to perform at renowned festivals in over 40 European countries, as well as in the United States and South America, Australia, Japan, Israel, Africa and Asia. The ensemble keeps an active concert schedule.

Longstanding collaborations with musical partners have enriched the ensemble’s repertoire over many years. These collaborations include clarinetist Karl Leister, cellist Michael Sanderling, violists Barbara Buntrock and Hartmut Rohde, pianists Alfred Brendel, Menahem Pressler, Andreas Staier and Christian Zacharias, sopranos Juliane Banse and Christiane Oelze, baritone Olaf Bär as well as the “King of Klezmer”, Giora Feidman.

Since 1992, the ensemble records its extensive repertoire on CD exclusively for the company Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm. These include complete recordings of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the entire Second Viennese School.

To date, the ensemble has released around 100 recordings, which are highly acclaimed by international critics and have received numerous awards, such as the Diapason d‘Or, the Premios CD-Compact, the Indie Award and five ECHO-Klassik Prizes.

Currently, the ensemble is devoting itself to the string quartet oeuvre of Joachim Raff as well as to the complete recording of Haydn‘s string quartets, which is due to be completed in 2024.

Another important focus has always been the work with contemporary composers – this has resulted in numerous world premieres of works by Beat Furrer, Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Steffen Schleiermacher, Christian Ofenbauer, Siegfried Thiele, Bernd Franke, Cristóbal Halffter and many others. Last year, the ensemble performed Thomas Agerfeldt Olsen‘s “Plappergeister” at the WDR Funkhauskonzert in Cologne.

Invited by Claudio Abbado, the LSQ served as a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for ten years and held a fellowship at Tokyo University of the Art (Geidai) for many years.