BRATTLEBORO — On Sunday, March 22, at 4 p.m., at Centre Congregational in Brattleboro, the Brattleboro Music Center's Chamber Music Series continues with the Heath Quartet: Oliver Heath and Cerys Jones, violins; Gary Pomeroy, viola; and Christopher Murray, cello.
The concert program includes Haydn, “Quartet in E flat major, op. 76 no. 6 (1799);” Janacek “Quartet No. 1, The Kreutzer Sonata (1923);” and Beethoven “Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131.”
Described by The Strad as giving “passionate performances that combine technical accomplishment with interpretative air,” the Heath Quartet is rapidly emerging as an original voice on the international chamber music scene.
Recipients of the 2012 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists Award and the 2012 Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Ensemble Prize, the Quartet has performed at many major festivals and venues throughout Europe.
Over the last year, highlights have included debuts at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and DeSingel Arts Centre in Antwerp, recitals with Michael Collins in Germany and Austria, appearances at the Salisbury, Peasmarsh, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern and Spitalelds festivals, as well as several concerts recorded for BBC Radio 3.
Other artists the quartet has collaborated with include Ian Bostridge, Edgar Meyer, Stephen Hough, Lawrence Power, the Tokyo Quartet and Colin Currie, and the composers Sophia Gubaidalina, Steve Mackey, and Brett Dean.
The quartet performs regularly at Wigmore Hall in the UK, where future engagements include complete cycles of both the Tippett and Bartok quartets and a collaboration with Anna Caterina Antonacci. This year, the quartet will make its debut at Carnegie Hall as part of a U.S. tour, return to perform at the Concertgebouw and Louvre, appear onstage in Calixto Beieto's Fidelio at the London Coliseum, and tour Mexico. Members of the quartet are on the faculty at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
The Heath Quartet was formed in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Rowland and Alasdair Tait, with whom they continued their studies at the Reina SoÂfia in Madrid. They were Leverhulme Junior Fellows at the RNCM from 2008 to 2010, and Senior Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 2010 to 2012.
The quartet has undertaken residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada and the Britten-Pears School, Snape Maltings, and studied at IMS Prussia Cove with András Schiff and Erich Höbarth. Other teachers have included Ferenc Rados, Isabelle Charisius and members of the Lindsay, Smetana, Takacs, and LaSalle Quartets.