Cristiano Gualco, violin; Paolo Andreoli, violin;
Simone Gramaglia, viola; Giovanni Scaglione, cello
Winner of the 2019 Franco Buitoni Award, Quartetto di Cremona is among the world’s preeminent string quartets, noted for its lustrous sound, refined musicianship, and stylistic versatility. According to The Strad, Its Lincoln Center debut in 2022 “was distinguished by splendid balance, abundant colour and a relaxed mastery of all the musical elements.” The quartet 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; appeared at leading festivals; and performed regularly on radio and television broadcasts, including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Quartetto di Cremona’s extensive repertoire encompasses key masterworks from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; essential late-nineteenth and twentieth-century literature; and contemporary works by Golijov, Lacheman, Fabio Vacchi, Silvia Colasanti, Nimrod Borenstein and Kalevi Aho. They are also known for their performances of work by Italian composers, including Verdi, Respighi and Boccherini.
In the 2023-2024 season, Quartetto di Cremona makes its Carnegie Hall debut in New York as part of a five-city U.S. tour that includes Santa Monica, Kansas City, Philadelphia and New Haven. In February and March, the quartet returns to the U.S. for performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, and in College Station, TX, Boise and Albuquerque. This season’s European highlights include a tour in Denmark, performances in the Netherlands and Belgium, a Wigmore Hall appearance in May 2024, an Asian tour and concerts at prestigious venues across Italy. The quartet plans to release their recording of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue in 2024.
Their most recent recording is Italian Postcards (debut on Avie Records, 2020), featuring music inspired by Italy and written by non-Italian composers, including the world premiere recording of Cieli d’Italia by Nimrod Borenstein. Previous recordings include an all-Schubert disc with cellist Eckart Runge (Audite, 2019) and a box set of the complete Beethoven quartet cycle (Audite, 2018), including a quintet with Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet; several of the seven individual discs in this set received widespread and 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.
Quartetto di Cremona leads a renowned string program, currently in its tenth year, for professional and advanced string quartets at the Accademia Walter Stauffer, now part of the Stauffer String Center, opened in 2021. The quartet also conducts masterclasses while on tour throughout Europe and the United States. 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 chamber music in Italy and throughout the world. The quartet is supported by the Kulturfond Peter Eckes which provides the musicians with three superb instruments: violin Paolo Antonio Testore, viola Gioachino Torazzi, cello Dom Nicola Amati. Cristiano Gualco plays his own violin Nicola Amati (Cremona, 1640). In 2015, the musicians were awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Cremona.
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“It’s a rare blend: breadth of sound and capriciousness combined with perfect tuning and ensemble has the players sounding absolutely of one voice… Nothing less than life-affirming.”
– Gramophone
“The Cremona Quartet completes its Beethoven series with a fine coupling, combining exemplary technique and intonational purity with an interpretive acuity that strips away 19th-century rhetoric while avoiding the pitfalls of sounding merely ‘historically informed’.”
– The Strad
“The Quartetto di Cremona’s magnificent survey of Beethoven’s Complete String Quartets moves securely and unquestionably into mastery... such warm playing; such perfection on a silver disc; what a glory this is.”
– The Herald
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