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The Borromeo String Quartet (= BSQ) is an American string quartet, in residence at the New England Conservatory since 1992. They have performed throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia, at numerous festivals and in many distinguished chamber music series. They are named after the Borromean Islands.
The BSQ was formed in 1989 by violinists Nicholas Kitchen and Ruggero Allifranchini, violist EnSik Choi, and cellist Yeesun Kim, who were then all young musicians at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Kitchen and Kim are husband and wife. Violist Hsin-Yun Huang joined the ensemble in 1994 after Choi left to pursue other opportunities. Allifranchini and Huang left the ensemble in 2000 to be replaced, respectively, by William Fedkenheuer and Mai Motobuchi. In 2006, Fedkenheuer left to pursue other opportunities (is now a member of the Miró Quartet) and was replaced by violinist Kristopher Tong.
Each visionary performance of the award-winning BSQ strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations of the classical music canon and its championing of works by 20th and 21st century composers, the ensemble has been hailed for its “edge-of-the- seat performances,” by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”
Inspiring audiences for more than 25 years, the Borromeo continues to be a pioneer in its use of technology, and has the trailblazing distinction of being the first string quartet to utilize laptop computers on the concert stage. Reading music this way helps push artistic boundaries, allowing the artists to perform solely from 4-part scores and composers’ manuscripts, a revealing and metamorphic experience which these dedicated musicians now teach to students around the world. As the New York Times noted, “The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of classical music. The BSQ players have embraced it in their daily musical lives like no other major chamber music group.” Moreover, the BSQ often leads discussions enhanced by projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audience the creative process of the composer. And in 2003 the BSQ became the first classical ensemble to make its own live concert recordings and videos, distributing them for many years to audiences through its Living Archive, a music learning web portal for which a new version will soon be released.
Passionate educators, the BSQ encourage audiences of all ages to explore and listen to both traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. The ensemble uses multi-media tools such as video projection to share the often surprising creative process behind some works, or to show graphically the elaborate architecture behind others. This produces delightfully refreshing viewpoints and has been a springboard for its acclaimed young people’s programs. One such program is MATHEMUSICA which delves into the numerical relationships that under-pin the sounds of music and show how musical syntax mirrors natural forms. CLASSIC VIDEO uses one movement of a quartet as the platform from which to teach computer drawing, video editing, animation, musical form and production processes to create a meaningful joining of music and visual art.
The BSQ has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory and Taos School of Music, both for 25 years, and has, for over two decades, enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where it continues to regularly appear. It is quartet-in-residence at the Heifetz International Music Institute, where first violinist Nicholas Kitchen is Artistic Director. The quartet was also in residence at, and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument collections) and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as the Hittman Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and was recently was in residence at Kansas University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Colorado State University, where it regularly appears.
The BSQ’s presentation of the cycle of Béla Bartók's String Quartets as well as its lecture “Bartók: Paths Not Taken,” both of which give audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear a set of rediscovered alternate movements Béla Bartók drafted for his six Quartets, has received accolades. Describing a Bartók concert at the Curtis Institute, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the quartet “performed at a high standard that brought you so deeply into the music's inner workings that you wondered if your brain could take it all in ... The music's mystery, violence, and sorrow become absolutely inescapable.”
Also noteworthy in the BSQ repertory are its dramatic discoveries within the manuscripts of L.v. Beethoven's Quartets, and its performances of the Complete Cycle; the Beethoven Decathlon (four concerts of L.v. Beethoven’s last ten quartets, all with pre-concert lectures exploring his manuscripts); and single L.v. Beethoven Tryptich concerts (one concert including three quartets). Its expansive repertoire also includes the Dmitri Shostakovich Cycle and those of Felix Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Arnold Schoenberg, Janáček, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and Gunther Schuller.
The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most important composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage, György Ligeti, Steve Reich, Aaron Jay Kernis, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Sebastian Currier, and Leon Kirchner, among many others; and has performed on major concert stages across the globe, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany, Kammermusik Basel (Switzerland), the Prague Spring Festival, and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The BSQ recently premiered new works written for it by Sebastian Currier and Aaron Jay Kernis at recitals at Carnegie Hall, Shriver Concerts, and the Tippet Rise Art Center. The ensemble continues to perform violinist Nicholas Kitchen's transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) and the Well-Tempered Clavier Book. I (BWV 846-869), the latter of which the BSQ recently released an acclaimed premiere recording which hit the billboard charts. The BSQ's recent disk, "As It Was, Is, And Will Be" (2011), on the GM/Living Archive label features the music of Béla Bartók, Mohammed Fairouz and Gunther Schuller.
“Nothing less than masterful” (Cleveland.com), the BSQ has received numerous awards throughout its illustrious career, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and Martin E. Segal Award, and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. It was also a recipient of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a prize-winner at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe wrote that the Borromeo Quartet "combines every 20th-century virtuoso ensemble virtue with an old-world sense of color, character, and style".
Awards:
Ensemble-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory of Music
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Taos School of Msummer program
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Heifetz International Music Institute
Prize-winner at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France (1990)
Winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions (1991); also earned them concert appearances at the Kennedy Center and the 92nd Street Y
Winner of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant
Winner of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award (2001)
Winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award (1998)
Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's Performance Today (1998-1999) |
