Askonas Holt has announced it is to handle the general management of period ensemble Chiaroscuro Quartet. Formed in 2005, Chiaroscuro Quartet comprises violinists Alina Ibragimova (Russia) and Pablo Hernán Benedí (Spain), the Swedish violist Emilie Hörnlund, and cellist Claire Thirion from France.
Performing with gut strings and Baroque bows, the quartet has recorded Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn for BIS, and was a prize-winner at Germany’s Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk/Musikfest Bremen in 2013.
In 2015, Chiaroscuro Quartet received Germany’s most prestigious CD award, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (awarded by German critics), for its latest recording of Mozart’s Quartet in D minor, K.421 and Mendelssohn’s Second string quartet in A minor, Op. 13.
Among the ensemble’s chamber music partners are instrumentalists Kristian Bezuidenhout, Trevor Pinnock, Jonathan Cohen, Nicolas Baldeyrou, Chen Halevi, Malcolm Bilson and Christophe Coin.
For the 2015-16 season, the quartet will appear at Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and various summer festivals such as West Cork, Hindsgavl and Gstaad. In April 2016 the quartet embarked on its first tour to Japan playing concerts in Tokyo and Hyogo.
