Quick Summary
• We welcome back the only active six-time Gramophone Award-winning string quartet, including Recording of the Year.
• In recent years, the PHQ has appeared on our series more than any other string Quartet.
• Like the Kronos Quartet, the BBC Music Magazine, the industry’s largest, rates the Pavel Haas “one of the ten greatest string quartet ensembles of all time.” Only five of the ten remain active.
• “If you haven’t heard the Pavel Haas Quartet, buckle your seat belts.” – NPR
• With the appearance of the Ebene Quartet closing CMC’s current season in April, subscribers will have heard all five of the active BBC “Top Ten” since the COVID shutdown, three within 12 months.
• Repertoire: TBA
• Bottom line: Hear why Gramophone asks “Is this the world’s most exciting string quartet.”

Deeper Dive

Based in Prague, the Pavel Haas Quartet was formed in 2002 and won its first Gramophone Award in 2007. They then won five more in the next ten years, including Recording of the Year, the most for any active quartet. The quartet is named for Czech composer Pavel Haas (1889-1945), who died in Auschwitz at age 45. The PHQ has championed his work, and The Strad describes their Dvorak interpretations as “nothing short of compelling.”

In keeping with its stature, the quartet appears at major venues including Wigmore Hall, London; Philharmonie and Konzerthaus, Berlin; Musikverein, Vienna; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; Tonhalle, Zürich; Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome;  NCPA, Beijing; LG Arts Centre, Seoul and Carnegie Hall, New York. While Gramophone asks, “The greatest string quartet ever?” the Times (London) removes the question mark.

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.

• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Quick Summary
• With Germany’s Leonkoro, CMC subscribers will have heard the winners of both the leading North American and British string quartet competitions in less than six months. (The Isidore String Quartet is the other.)
• The Leonkoro won London’s International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the same year that the Isidore won Banff.
• The Guardian wrote earlier this month that “the Leonkoros are surely stars in the making.”
• Also this month, The New York Times says of their Berg Lyric Suite recording to be released on March 20: “The Leonkoro’s account is as compelling as any.”
• Bottom Line: In its Leonkoro cover story, The Strad describes them as “at the forefront of a new wave of brilliant young string quartets.”

Deeper Dive

In 2006, a Gramophone article was headlined, “the most exciting era ever for string quartets.” In February 2010, it said, “it is clear that some of the new generation of string quartets, who were only then beginning to emerge, have pulled ahead of their rivals.” With the rise of the Leonkoro and the Isidore, among others, any day Gramophone may repeat itself.

In 2023, just a year after Leonkoro won the Wigmore Hall International Hall String Quartet competition, it was already describing them as “at the forefront of a new wave of brilliant young string quartets.” In 2021, Leonkoro had already won second place at Italy’s Premio Borciani string quartet competition, Europe’s foremost. (No first prize was awarded that year.)

Since then, the Leonkoro, led by violinist Jonathan Schwarz and his cellist brother, Lukas, has performed at major concert halls, including Vienna’s Konzerthaus, home to the Vienna Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, and the Library of Congress. Their first recording was released in fall 2023. Their second was released in Europe in January and will be available for purchase in the U.S. in April. By the time they appear here in April 2026, who can say?

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.
• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Summary

·  The leading contemporary string quartet and one of the BBC’s “ten greatest string quartets of all time.” (Only five are still active.)

·  Now celebrating its 53rd season, more than 1,200 new works have been commissioned for it.

·  For its 50th anniversary Kronos celebrated with a commissioning project, 50 for the Future, and made the sheet music to all 50 pieces available free online.

·  The New York Times review of its 2025 Carnegie Hall performance called the Kronos “a venerable quartet returned with a typically eclectic program and a newfound emotional intensity … the quartet’s ranks refreshed by three brilliant new players.”

·  In October 2023, Kronos drew the largest Cincinnati chamber music audience in a decade.

·  Repertoire TBA

·  Bottom Line: Kronos is hard to describe, compelling for you to experience.

Deeper Dive

Kronos was founded in 1973 by Seattle violinist David Harrington, who continues to lead it. At age 14, he realized that all of the composers whose music he was being taught were of the same faith and lived in the same city at about the same time. “There must be more,” he thought. Since its founding, Kronos has been about the “more.” In addition to “Fifty for the Future” noted above, it has almost certainly drawn more new audience members to chamber music than any other contemporary ensemble.

Based in San Francisco for most of its history, in addition to Harrington, today’s members include former Cincinnati resident, cellist, and composer, Paul Wiancko, and former CCM viola professor, Ayane Kosaza. The 1,200 commissions have been written by composers from all over the world in many genres. The group travels with its own sound and lighting technician. Kronos is not your father’s or mother’s string quartet.

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.
• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Quick Summary

·   We welcome to Cincinnati for the second time one of the world’s great cellists.
·   A two-time Gramophone Award winner, Jean-Guihen Queyras returns with pianist Alexander Melnikov.
·   Jean-Guihen was first here as a member of the Arcanto Quartet which gave one of the most stunning performances any of us had ever heard. Now disbanded, we are bringing its members back individually.
·   (Arcanto first violinist Antje Weithaas will be here with the Israeli Chamber Project on March 24, 2026.
·   We encourage you to listen to Jean-Guihen’s 2023-24 recording of the Bach Cello Suites. Gramophone describes it as “a master at his craft.”
·   Rather than cancel his 2025 U.S. tour, as many European artists did, Jean-Guihen donated his 2025 U.S. tour profits to the Ukraine charity United 24 Foundation.
·   Repertoire: TBA
·   Bottom Line: Riveting artist reaches you with works beyond the standard chamber chestnuts.

Deeper Dive

Jean-Guihen Queyras learned his interpretative approach from Pierre Boulez, with whom his artistic partnership spanned many years. This philosophy, alongside a flawless technique and a clear, decisive sound, shapes Jean-Guihen Queyras’ approach to every performance and his absolute commitment to the music.

Jean-Guihen has performed with orchestras the world over and served as artist-in-residence at with Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Recent tours included the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, London Symphony, Orchestra de Paris. His 2025 tour with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Yannick Nézet-Seguin included a December concert at Carnegie Hall. His recording of Schumann’s piano quartet and quintet won a 2024 Gramophone Award. Of the release the same year of Queyras second Bach Cello Suites recording, Gramophone extols, “There is the most satisfying sense that Queyras knows the place and function of every single note in each musical sentence but isn’t precious about it.”

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.
• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Quick Summary
• The Danish String Quartet, now in its 23rd year, is without a doubt the most in-demand European chamber ensemble in America.
• A twp-time Gramophone Award winner and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year.”
• While most European ensembles do one U.S. tour each season, the Danes have been doing as many as four.
• In spring 2024, they drew Cincinnati’s third largest audience for chamber music since the COVID shutdown.
• Now, DSQ members have young children and will only make one trip to the U.S. next season. We are fortunate to have them. Cincinnati will likely be the smallest city on their 2026-27 tour.
• Repertoire TBA. The New York Times calls them “an exceptional quartet, whatever repertory they play.”
• Bottom Line: Hear why three times as many U.S. presenter want them as their tour can accommodate.

Deeper Dive

The Danish String Quartet, now in its 23^rd year, is unquestionably the most in-demand European chamber ensemble in America. While most do one U.S. tour each season, and some only every other year, the Danes have been doing as many as four. In spring 2024, they drew Cincinnati’s third largest audience for chamber music since the COVID shutdown. Only by luck did we learn from their agent at the Chamber Music America conference in January 205 that due to its members having young children, they would only do one U.S. tour next season. (In a tech-driven world, personal relationships still have value.) We booked them on the spot.  Cincinnati will almost certainly be the smallest city in which they appear. If you want to know why the DSQ is in such demand, ask anyone who has heard them live.

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.

• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Quick Summary
• We could not be more excited about the return of the ISQ given their stunning performance with pianist Jeremy Denk here last March. The Strad: “Excitement fills the air around the Isidore.”
• We seldom bring back so young an ensemble so soon.
• Joining the ISQ is one of the world’s most exceptional young cellists in his Chamber Music Cincinnati debut.
• After winning the 2022 Banff Competition, it was as if the Isidore was shot out of a cannon. In each of the past three seasons, they’ve played up to 100 concerts.
• With cellist Sterling Elliot they will play what many regard as the single greatest chamber work, Schubert’s String Quintet, written in 1828, just months before his death.
• Their quartet’s first recording, Adorations, name for a Florence Price works, will be out in April. We can’t wait.
• Repertoire: TBA
• Bottom line: Experience deeply emotional connections to the past, present, and future.

Deeper Dive

If there were an award for the decade’s fastest rise by a young U.S. ensemble, the ISQ would surely win. Formed at Juilliard in 2019 and named for the Julliard Quartet’s Isidore Cohen, they reconvened after the Covid shutdown under the JSQ’s legendary cellist, Joel Krosnick, with coaching by it’s late violist, Roger Tapping, its current cellist, Astrid Schween, and by Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Amory, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried.

On winning the 2022 Banff Competition, it was as if they had been shot out of a cannon. Their 2023 Chamber Music America showcase performance was attended by many of the nation’s leading chamber music presenters, including CMC. The same year, they were awarded the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant and have never looked back. During each of the three ensuing seasons, they have played as many as 100 concerts, including last month with clarinetist and former CSO Associate Principal Anthony McGill in Indianapolis.

Sterling Elliot received both Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from Juilliard, where he studied with Juilliard String Quartet cellist Joel Krosnick and with Clara Kim. Still in his mid-twenties, Elliott has appeared with orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony and the Dallas Symphony, among many.

CMC Subscriptions: Chamber Music’s Greatest Value

• Our “Early Bird” subscriptions for these six concerts are on sale today on our web site and through the Memorial Hall box office. Only you who are receiving this email know about it, giving you first choice of open seats.
• All available seats will be opened to the general public for subscription purchases on Tuesday, February 24.
• Currents subscribers’ seats will be held until June 1, then released to the general public. The six concert price ― $120 in the Orchestra or Balcony ― is one of the nation’s great chamber music bargains. It’s up to 50% off the single ticket price helping to make our concerts more affordable to everyone.

Please remember this affordability pricing in your giving. Only if you do can we maintain pricing at this level.

We hope you are as excited about next season as we are. This may well be our strongest season ever, so we expect subscriptions to sell fast. Single tickets for remaining seats will go on sale June 1.

Countdown to 100: Five…

In 2029-30, Chamber Music Cincinnati will celebrate its 100th Anniversary. Only four other U.S presenters will have reached that milestone. (Kudos to St. Paul’s Schubert Club, the first to do so, in 1983!)

The six 2025-26 concerts comprise the first of five celebratory seasons that will culminate in a landmark.

Chamber Music Cincinnati and Memorial Hall welcome you to them all!

Four-time Gramophone Award Winner including Recording of the Year

“…a show-stopper: gleaming, vocal-like rhetorical freedom combining to dazzling effect.” – Gramophone

“Quatuor Ébène cements its place among elite string quartets.” – Washington Post

“…as satisfying as one could wish for.” – Washington Post

One of the “Ten Greatest String Quartet Ensembles of All Time” – BBC Music Magazine

Pierre Colombet, violin, Gabriel Le Magadure, violin Marie Chilemme, viola, Yuya Okamoto, violoncello

Each season, Chamber Music Cincinnati presents one of the five ensembles remaining active from the BBC-named “Ten Greatest String Quartet Ensembles of All Time.” This season, it is the surprising Cincinnati debut of the Quatour Ébène (surprising only because at 25 they have not been here before). Better late than never, we are confident.

A concert by the Quatuor Ébène is a musical and sensual happening. In the past two decades the quartet has set standards by making familiar repertoire accessible in new ways and by constantly seeking exchange with the audience. Last spring cellist Yuya Okamoto joined the Quartet, adding a new dimension.

Quatour Ébène was founded at France’s Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory in 1999. After studies with the Quatuor Ysaÿe, Gábor Takács, Eberhard Feltz and György Kurtág, the Ébène’s unprecedented success at the 2004 ARD Music Competition marked the start of their rise to fame. Numerous prizes and awards followed, including the Belmont Prize of the Forberg-Schneider Foundation (2005), the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (2007), and in 2019 the first ensemble ever honored with the Frankfurt Music Prize.

In addition to the traditional repertoire, the quartet explores other music genres. (“A string quartet that can easily morph into a jazz band” – New York Times, 2009). What began in 1999 as a distraction in the conservatory’s practice rooms, improvising on jazz standards & pop songs, has become a trademark. To date, the quartet has released four albums in other genres: Fiction (2010), Brazil (2014), Eternal Stories (2017) and “Waves” (2024), a new project with the electronic sound artist Xavier Tribolet. The free approach to various styles creates a tension that is beneficial to every aspect of their work.

Quatuor Ébène’s recordings of Bartók, Beethoven, Debussy, Haydn, Fauré and the Mendelssohn siblings, have received numerous awards, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and the Midem Classic Awards. Together with Antoine Tamestit, they recorded Mozart’s Quintets K. 515 and K. 516, released in spring of 2023 to accolades such as Choc Classica, Diapason d’Or, Gramophone Recording of the Month.

Foremost among their recordings are Beethoven’s 16 string quartets, recorded on six continents between May 2019 and January 2020. Followed their 20th stage anniversary, crowned this achievement by performing the complete Beethoven cycle in venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris, Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, and Carnegie Hall.

In January 2021, the quartet was appointed by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich to establish a string quartet class as part of the newly founded Quatuor Ébène Academy. More recently, the quartet has joined the Belcea Quartet to perform the Mendelssohn and Enescu octets. For the 23/24 season the Philharmonie Luxembourg has chosen the Quatuor Ébène as resident ensemble. Further recent highlights have been presenting John Adam’s Absolute Jest with the Luxembourg Philharmonic and concerts at the Salzburg Festival, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Athens’ Megaron, London’s Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall.

Instruments & bows

Pierre Colombet plays a 1717 Antonio Stradivari “Piatti” violin, kindly loaned by a generous sponsor through the Beare’s International Violin Society, as well as a 1736 Matteo Goffriller violin generously loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider, who also lent a bow by Charles Tourte (Paris, 19th century).

Gabriel Le Magadure also plays two violins: the “ex-Baron Rothschild” by Peter Guarneri of Venice kindly loaned by the Miller-Porter Collection through the Beare’s International Violin Society, and one .c1740 with a Guarneri label loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider. He plays a bow by Dominique Pecatte (ca.1845) also loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider.

Marie Chilemme plays two violas: the 1734 “Gibson” Stradivari, generously loaned by the Stradivari Foundation Habisreutinger, and one by Marcellus Hollmayr, Füssen (1625) loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider.

Yuya Okamoto plays violoncello by Giovanni Grancino (Milan 1682).

Countdown to 100: Five…

In 2029-30, Chamber Music Cincinnati will celebrate its 100th Anniversary. Only four other U.S presenters will have reached that milestone. (Kudos to St. Paul’s Schubert Club, the first to do so, in 1983!)

The six 2025-26 concerts comprise the first of five celebratory seasons that will culminate in a landmark.

Chamber Music Cincinnati and Memorial Hall welcome you to them all!

“…riveting and intelligently conceived.” – New York Times

“…made you want to rush home and discover more.” – New York Times

“A sparkling concert of music for mixed ensembles.” – The New York Times

Israeli Chamber Project. Based both in Israel and in New York, the ensemble was created as a means for its members to give something back to the community where they began their musical education and to showcase Israeli culture, through its music and musicians to concert goers overseas. Now in its second decade, the Israeli Chamber Project is a dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp, and piano, that brings together some of today’s most distinguished musicians for chamber music concerts and educational and outreach programs both in Israel and abroad.

The Israeli Chamber Project has appeared at venues including London’s Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall, and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, as well as Carnegie Hall, the Morgan Library & Museum, Town Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. Guest artists on their tours have included Tabea Zimmermann, the Guarneri String Quartet’s Michael Tree and Peter Wiley, as well as international soloists Liza Ferschtman and Antje Weithaas.

Ms. Weithaas performs with the ICP on this tour, was first violin in the legendary Arcanto Quartet with Ms. Zimmerman, Daniel Sepec, and Jean-Guihen Queyras. They performed on CMC’s series in 2016. No one present has ever forgotten her performance. In 2024, Gramophone named her recording of Beethoven piano sonatas with pianist Dénes Várjon one of the “50 Greatest Beethoven Recordings.” Weithaas studied at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler,” where she now teaches. An International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition winner, she became its artistic director in 2019.

Repertoire

Bernard Herrmann: Souvenir de Voyage for clarinet and string quartet

Erwin Schulhoff: Sonata for Flute and Piano [short, quite jazzy and engaging] Intermission

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 Eroica (arranged for flute, clarinet, piano and string quartet by Yuval Shapiro)