Biographies
Ben Hancox, Hannah Dawson, Robin Ashwell, Cara Berridge
Widely known for its energy, creativity and integrity of interpretation, the Sacconi Quartet continues to perform with its four founder members. The Quartet performs regularly at London’s major venues, and each May hosts the Sacconi Chamber Music Festival at Folkestone. They will celebrate their tenth anniversary in 2011.
In the 2009-10 season, the Sacconi Quartet made their first visit to the Middle East, where they were invited by the British Council to give concerts and workshops in Jordan. The Quartet also returned to the Wigmore Hall, curated a week of collaborative performances at King’s Place, and made their debuts in Brussels and at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany.
Highlights of the current season include the start of a complete cycle of the Beethoven String Quartets, the continuation of their UK tour with the Navarra Quartet, and collaborative performances with Mark Simpson, Guy Johnston, Jamie Walton and Simon Crawford-Philips at King’s Place, London, as well as performances at the Cheltenham, St Ives, Aberystwyth, Gower, North York Moors and Appleby festivals.
The Sacconi Quartet has been the recipient of many prestigious prizes and awards. In 2005 they were awarded 1st Prize in the Trondheim International String Quartet Competition, and the following year were triple prize-winners at the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition. They won the Kurtág Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and in 2006 were awarded an Angel Award by The Herald newspaper for outstanding performances in the Edinburgh Festival.
The Quartet’s far-reaching education-outreach programme has seen them playing to children and adults from all walks of life, including prisoners and refugees in Kent. Taking music out of the concert hall and into the community, often to people who cannot physically get to conventional chamber music recitals, is central to the aims of their Sacconi Festival in Folkestone. They also collaborate regularly with the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust, nurturing the next generation of chamber music listeners.
The Quartet’s Sacconi Records label is expanding steadily, with one or two releases each year. Their debut CD of Haydn’s opus 54 quartets was received a four-star review in Classical Music Magazine and was awarded Recording of the Month on Music Web-International.com. Their 2006 recording of Finzi’s song cycle By Footpath and Stile with baritone Roderick Williams for Naxos received four and five-star reviews in all the national broadsheets and BBC Music Magazine. To date the Quartet has given thirteenworld premières and three British premières, including quartets by John Metcalf, Robin Holloway, Alun Hoddinott and György Kurtág. Recently the Quartet gave the world premiere of a piano quintet by Gwilym Simcock and also performed as the solo string quartet on Paul McCartney’s new song Come Home.
The Sacconi Quartet is the Quartet in Association at the Royal College of Music, and is Quartet in Residence at the Bristol Old Vic theatre. The Quartet has an active Friends and Patrons network to support its education-outreach programme, and always welcomes new members. For details, please see www.sacconi.com.
The name Sacconi Quartet comes from the outstanding twentieth-century Italian violin maker and restorer Simone Sacconi, whose book The Secrets of Stradivari is considered an indispensable reference for violin makers. The Quartet are fortunate to play on a fine set of instruments: Ben plays an 18th century Italian violin on loan from an anonymous owner, and Hannah an unknown Italian from 1750. Robin plays a large Sacconi viola made in New York in 1934 and Cara a Nicolaus Gagliano cello from 1781, both generously on loan to them.
JULY 2010