RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet


RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, also known as the RTÉ String Quartet is the resident string quartet to Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland's national broadcasting service, and collectively artists in residence to University College Cork. The Quartet members are also founders of the internationally acclaimed West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

Organisation and history

The quartet comprises Gregory Ellis and Keith Pascoe on violins, Simon Aspell on viola and Christopher Marwood with cello. It is part of RTÉ Performing Groups.
The RTÉ Quartet was founded in 1985 and won the London International String Quartet Competition in 1988. It is one of Europe's most successful quartets, internationally recognised for its beauty of sound, clarity of texture and integrity of interpretation within an unusually wide and varied range of repertoire.
Familiar visitors to all the main UK festivals, the Vanbrugh Quartet also broadcasts frequently for BBC Radio 3 and performs regularly at London's Wigmore Hall and South Bank.
The Quartet enjoys a thriving international career with past appearances including concerts in Berlin, Amsterdam, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Flanders Festival, Menuhin Festival, Gstaad plus numerous visits to Scandinavia where recordings were made of the complete Beethoven quartets. The quartet tours the USA on a regular basis with performances in Carnegie Hall, New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Recordings

released two Vanbrugh Quartet CDs of chamber music by Charles Villiers Stanford. The Quartet's recent recording of three of Boccherini’s cello quintets on Hyperion was featured as Editor's Choice in Gramophone Magazine.
Other recent CDs include Metronome's second CD devoted to the music of Belfast composer Piers Hellawell, a Black Box release of Ian Wilson's three quartets and a recording for Hyperion of works for quartet and soprano by John Tavener. These recordings join a discography of twenty-one releases which includes the complete Beethoven Quartets and works by Haydn, Schubert, Dvořák, Janáček, Dohnányi, E.J. Moeran, Robert Simpson, John Tavener, John McCabe, John Kinsella, Raymond Deane, Brian Boydell and Walter Beckett.