RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet
Winner of the 1988 Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition, the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet is widely regarded as one of Europe’s most successful string quartets. Appointed Resident Quartet to RTÉ in 1986, the group continues to enjoy a thriving international career in performance and recording.
The Quartet members are also Artists in Residence at University College, Cork and co-founders of the internationally acclaimed West Cork Chamber Music Festival. In 1996 the Quartet launched the Vanbrugh Quartet Scholarship Fund, a charitable fund dedicated to encouraging the art of chamber music amongst Ireland’s talented young musicians. Their appointment as lecturers in chamber music at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in 2009 has extended their commitment to education and recent primary and secondary school workshops and concerts have been hugely successful.
As well as presenting the core string quartet repertoire, the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet has consistently championed the work of Irish composers in concerts and broadcasts throughout Ireland and abroad, including premières of new works by Gerald Barry, Ian Wilson, Raymond Deane, Donnacha Dennehy, Rachel Holstead, Deirdre Gribbin and Sam Perkin.
The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet has an extensive and critically acclaimed discography which includes the complete Beethoven quartets and the RTÉ lyric fm compilation CD Quartet Classics. Their recording of quintets by Boccherini was selected as Gramophone magazine’s Critics’ Choice and they were the featured ensemble in Classical Music magazine’s September 2010 edition.
Their 25th Anniversary celebrations began in October 2010, with complete Beethoven cycles in Cork, Dublin and London receiving rave reviews. Following spring recitals in Cork, Dublin, Kildare and Lucan, the season continued with a recital in the Wigmore Hall, London on June 4, 2011, and performances in Clifden, Wicklow, Ballymaloe Cork, Waterford, Letterkenny, Kenmare, Killarney and Dublin took place in the Autumn of 2011. They are collaborating with several eminent Irish artists including Barry Douglas, Fintan Sutton, Cormac Ó hAodáin, Peter Kerr and Fergal Caulfield and were the featured ensemble in two special workshop days showcasing the works of Frederick May and Frank Corcoran.
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