Winning the Finalists’ Prize at the Premio Paolo Borciani 2011 in Reggio Emilia and then, only four weeks later, First Prize and the Monash University Grand Prize at the 6th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, the Amaryllis Quartett has emerged as one of the leading string quartets of their generation. The four young musicians, who first studied with Walter Levin in Basel and later with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne and Günter Pichler in Madrid, have also won prizes at international competitions in Heerlen, Eindhoven, and Graz, and have been named scholarship winners of the Deutscher Musikrat. In 2012 they won the Chamber Music Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation. Their 2011 release, White, featuring works by Haydn and Webern, won the 2012 Echo Klassik Award as “Chamber Music Recording of the Year.”
The Amaryllis Quartett regularly performs in concert series and at festivals such as the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Heidelberger Frühling, and Lucerne Festival, at venues such as the Muziekgebow Amsterdam, the Tonhalle in Zurich, Vienna’s Musikverein, Teatro della Pergola in Florence, the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and the Dai-ichi Seimei Hall in Tokyo. The quartet has been featured in recordings and productions by German broadcasters, by Swiss Radio DRS and by Radio France. In addition the string quartet has inaugurated its own recital series at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Lübeck’s Kolosseum, and at the Concert Hall in Solothurn, Switzerland.
The musicians are devoted not only to premiere performances of new music by composers such as Eino Tamberg, Johannes Fischer, or the Chinese composer Lin Yang, but also include forgotten masterpieces in their recitals. The Quartet particularly enjoys combining works from the Viennese classical period with those of the Second Viennese School.
The Amaryllis Quartett regularly performs with chamber music partners Barbara Westphal, Dimitri Ashkenazy, François Benda, Patrick Demenga, Paul Katz, Jens Peter Maintz, Gustav Rivinius, Gerhard Schulz, and Michael Tree.