(C) Andrej Grilc
Barbican Quartet
The Barbican Quartet was founded in 2014 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Since 2017, they study with Professor Günter Pichler at the Madrid International Chamber Music Institute of the Reina Sofía School of Music, thanks to a scolarship from Fundación Talgo. It is formed by Amarins Wierdsma and Kate Maloney (violins), Christoph Slenczka (viola) and Yoanna Prodanova (cello).
2022 has already been an outstanding year for the quartet, following the appointment of new second violinist, Kate Maloney in February. A short 6 months later the quartet celebrated an outstanding first prize win at the 71st ARD International String Quartet Competition, also being awarded the special prize for Best Interpretation of the commissioned work by Dobrinka Tabakova, the Genuin Classics CD production special prize, the GEWA prize and the Henle Urtext prize. This incredible success follows the quartets third prize win at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in May.
The Barbican quartet is also mentored by the Quatuor Ébène in Hochschule für Musik München and they are guided and supported by the Belcea Quartet, Alasdair Tait, Andras Keller, David Waterman and Ferenc Rados.
The quartet won the first prize at the 2019 Joseph Joachim International Chamber Music Competition as well as the 2018 St Martin in the Fields Chamber Music Competition. They made their Wigmore Hall debut in 2017 thanks to the Maisie Lewis Award and in 2018 the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded them the Albert and Eugenie Frost Prize. The Barbican Quartet were selected as the St John Smith Square Young Artists for 2020 and were Park Lane Group artists in 2016.
The Barbican Quartet has appeared in festivals such as Peasmarsh Festival, Vibre! Quatuors à Bordeaux, Zeister Muziekdagen, Montreal Chamber Music Festival, IMS Prussia Cove and Aldeburgh. Their performances have been broadcast on BR Klassik Radio, NPO Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3.
In the 2022/2023 season they will be recording and releasing their debut cd, and touring in Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Canada and the USA.