For chamber music lovers, the 2018/2019 season thus offers a number of welcome opportunities for utter listening enjoyment – “unforgettable moments of sheer musical magic” (Drehpunkt Kultur). The Hagen Quartet will be focusing on Franz Schubert for this season. In addition, they will also be directing their attention mainly to Shostakovich, but also to Beethoven, Dvořák and Schumann with all their tonal shapes and concentrated musical details.

Once again, in the course of this concert season, the Hagen Quartet’s performance schedule will take them to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Wigmore Hall London and moreover to Brussels, Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin, to name but a few. They are also guests again at the Salzburg Festival and the Schubertiade Hohenems. In Asia there will be another tour with concerts in Tokyo and Fukushima as well as concerts in China, Macao and Taiwan. The Hagen Quartet will travel to the United States for concerts at Carnegie Hall New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Philadelphia.

The Hagen Quartet’s recording featuring the Mozart String Quintets K387 and K458 was awarded the Diapason d'or and the Choc of Classica Magazine (France), as well as the coveted German ECHO Klassik Prize (2016) for the Best Chamber Music Recording of the 17th/18th Centuries.

In 2011, the Hagen Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary with two recordings for Myrios Classics featuring works by Mozart, Webern, Beethoven, Grieg and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet (with Jörg Widmann). That same year, the Hagen Quartet won the ECHO Klassik Prize as Ensemble of the Year; in 2012, the quartet was named Honorary Member of the Vienna Konzerthaus.

The Hagen Quartet’s unprecedented 3 1/2-decade career began in 1981. Its early years, marked by a series of prizes in chamber music competitions and an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon that was to produce around forty-five CDs over the following twenty years, enabled the group to work its way through the immensely vast repertoire for string quartet in which this ensemble’s distinctive profile has emerged. Collaborations with artistic personalities such as György Kurtág and the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt are as important to the Hagen Quartet as its concert appearances with performers including Maurizio Pollini, Mitsuko Uchida, Sabine Meyer, Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff, and Jörg Widmann.

The group’s concert repertoire and discography feature attractive and intelligently arranged programmes embracing the entire history of the string quartet genre, from its pre-Haydn beginnings right through to Kurtág. The Hagen Quartet also works closely with composers of its own generation: not only reviving existing works, but also commissioning and premiering new pieces.

Many young string quartets regard the Hagen Quartet as a model in terms of sound quality, stylistic variety, ensemble playing and serious commitment to the works and composers of the genre. As teachers and mentors at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Hochschule in Basel, as well as in international masterclasses, the quartet’s members pass on their great wealth of experience to younger colleagues.

The Hagen Quartet plays on old Italian master instruments.

“Music that sounds as if it came from another planet...” “The pinnacle of musicality!”

(Drehpunkt Kultur and Die Presse.com)

Widmann was awarded the Bayerischer Staatspreis for music in 2017, honouring her individuality and exceptional musicianship. Widmann was also the recipient of an International Classical Music Award (Concerto category) for her critically acclaimed recording of both Mendelssohn’s and Schumann’s Violin Concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, released in August 2016 by ECM and which Widmann herself conducted from the violin.

Named ‘Musician of the Year’ at the International Classical Music Awards 2013, Widmann has enjoyed collaborations with some of the world’s leading orchestras include the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Orchestre National de France, Tonhalle Zurich, Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony, Bayerische Rundfunk, and Sydney Symphony, with distinguished conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Roger Norrington, Edward Gardner, Sakari Oramo, Vladimir Jurowski, Marek Janowski, Christoph von Dohnányi and Daniel Harding. She has also appeared at such widely known festivals as Berliner Festspiele, Salzburg, Lucerne, Festival d' Automne, Ravinia Festival and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. During the 2014-15 season, Widmann was Artist-in-Residence at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, which included numerous recital and chamber performances and a play/direct project on gut strings with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. That season also saw Carolin perform the world premiere of a new violin concerto written for her by Julian Anderson, at the Southbank Centre with the London Philharmonic under Jurowski.

Following the release of Widmann’s critically acclaimed Mendelssohn/Schumann Concerto’s disc, the 2016/2017 season saw her give debuts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Irish Chamber Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonia do Estado de São Paulo, Halle Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, as well as Nuremberg Philharmonic. Widmann also premiered Michael Zev Gordon’s new violin concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.

Highlights of Widmann’s 2018-19 season include invitations to the Berliner Philharmoniker, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, RSB Orchester Berlin, London Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony, Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig. She will also perform the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s 

Violin Concerto No. 2 at Suntory Hall in Tokyo and will perform the work in Europe with Orchestre de Paris and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Alte Oper under Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

A prolific chamber musician, Carolin appears regulary at the leading concert halls including Wigmore Hall, Bozar in Brussels, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. This season she will embark on major recital tours of North and South America, Italy and she will return to the Wiener Konzerthaus to perform an all Beethoven recital as part of their Beethoven celebrations.

Her discs of Schubert and Schumann sonatas received critical acclaim including the “Diapason d'Or” and the German Record Critics' Award. In 2006, Carolin Widmann's debut CD, “Reflections I,” was named “Critics' Choice of the Year” by the German Record Critics’ Award Association. Her recording of Morton Feldman’s concerto “Violin and Orchestra” with Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Emilio Pomarico was released in 2013.

Carolin Widmann was born in Munich and studied with Igor Ozim in Cologne, Michèle Auclair in Boston and David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Since 2006, she has been professor of violin at Leipzig’s University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy”. Carolin Widmann plays a G.B. Guadagnini violin from 1782.

His musical career path has been enriched from Italy till Conservatoire de Paris and at Université Paris IV (Sorbonne), where he has obtained his doctor degree with the highest honour (congratulations from the jury) in April 2015, specialized in interpretation, research and practice, with his thesis on the interpretation of time in L'orologio di Bergson of Salvatore Sciarrino and Carceri d'Invenzione IIb of Brian Ferneyhough. Being the laureate at several other competitions, he also won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at Darmstadt.

He has collaborated with numerous soloists of his generation such as the singers Stéphane Degout and Barbara Hannigan, the harpists Anneleen Lenaerts and Émilie Gastaud. As a soloist he has played with BBC Scottish Orchestra and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He has worked with some of the well-renowned composers, conductors and artists of his time such as Salvatore Sciarrino, Brian Ferneyhough, Pierre Boulez, Péter Eötvös, Matthias Pintscher, Tito Ceccherini, Ivan Fedele, Hugues Dufourt, Stefano Gervasoni, Bruno Mantovani, Michael Finnissy and Pierluigi Billone.

He has given quantities of masterclasses and seminars organized by the Conservatory of Shanghai (China), Tokyo University of the Arts (Japan), Monash University (Australia) and University of London (UK). On a very regular base, he works as a teaching assistant in the composition class of Salvatore at Accademia Chigiana of Siena in Italy.

During the Covid pandemic, following the end of the first lockdown in the summer of 2020, Mr Capuçon set off on a special tour, Un été en France (A Summer in France) – a musical journey that allowed families across the country to attend live concerts. He arranged another such tour the following year, this time inviting young instrumentalists and dancers to join him on stage. Following such success, the initiative has continued and, to date, has drawn over 145,000 spectators to 80 concerts held in 66 towns and villages in France, giving 69 emerging artists the chance to share the stage and spotlight at his side. The tour has been the subject of five documentaries, the most recent of which aired between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2025.

Highlights of his orchestral collaborations in recent seasons include concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Christian Thielemann, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Stéphane Denève, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Christoph Koncz, as well as tours with the Filarmonica della Scala conducted by Riccardo Chailly, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (hr-Sinfonieorchester) under Alain Altinoglu and the Rotterdam Philharmonic with conductor Lahav Shani.

He recently toured across Europe and performed at Carnegie Hall with Evgeny Kissin, as well as with Rudolf Buchbinder, Renaud Capuçon and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. Each year, in his capacity as a chamber musician, he is invited to perform with partners such as Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Lisa Batiashvili, Frank Braley, Renaud Capuçon, Jérôme Ducros, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Menahem Pressler, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Yuja Wang, as well as with celebrated quartets, including the Quatuors Artemis, Ébène, Hagen and Modigliani.

Gautier Capuçon also founded the Capucelli ensemble alongside six young cellists, graduates of his “Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle”, an audition-based mentoring programme. Capucelli has performed across Europe and in Taiwan.

The 2025/26 season took Mr Capuçon on tour with the Berliner Philharmoniker and conductor Kirill Petrenko. He also enjoyed a residency with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and performed with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt for the openings of the Dvořák Prague Festival and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. Further, he performed with the Orchestre de Paris under Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the San Francisco Symphony led by Simone Young and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Over the course of his career, Mr Capuçon has forged many deep and lasting musical friendships. He is invited each season to play with the greatest orchestras, including the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Los Angeles and New York, as well as the Chicago, San Francisco and London Symphony Orchestras. He works with conductors such as Lionel Bringuier, Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Tugan Sokhiev.

Memorable moments in chamber music include Mr Capuçon’s concerts with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and violinist Lisa Batiashvili, as well as a performance tour with pianist Nikolai Lugansky.

He also collaborates with many contemporary composers, including Lera Auerbach, Karol Beffa, Esteban Benzecry, Nicola Campogrande, Qigang Chen, Bryce Dessner, Richard Dubugnon, Henri Dutilleux, Jérôme Ducros, Danny Elfman, Thierry Escaich, Joe Hisaishi, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Andrew Norman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Max Richter, Wolfgang Rihm and Jörg Widmann.

Recording exclusively for Erato (Warner Music), Mr Capuçon has won many awards for his extensive and varied discography. Following his album Intuition, his 2020 release, Émotions, featuring works by composers such as Debussy, Schubert and Elgar, topped the sales charts for over 30 weeks, with more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide, and was certified gold in France. In 2022, his subsequent album, entitled Sensations, became the first classical recording to reach number one on the all-genre charts in France. It was followed by Destination Paris in 2023, focused on works dedicated to France’s capital. After his album Elgar & Walton: Cello Concertos, recorded with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra and released in autumn 2024, Mr Capuçon created an album inspired by world premieres, Gaïa, in November 2025. Bringing together works by leading-edge musical minds such as Max Richter, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Gabriela Montero, Joe Hisaishi and Nico Muhly, the album was presented in concert with the San Francisco Symphony in November 2025.

His previous recordings include the Shostakovich concertos with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, works by Saint-Saëns with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France led by Lionel Bringuier, the complete Beethoven sonatas with pianist Frank Braley, Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major with the Quatuor Ébène, Intuition with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under Douglas Boyd, as well as live recordings with Martha Argerich, Renaud Capuçon and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink. He also recorded Beethoven’s piano trios with Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley, sonatas composed by Franck and Chopin with Yuja Wang, as well as a solo album, Souvenirs, with works by Bach, Dutilleux and Kodály alongside a greatest-hits collection, forming a three-disc set released especially for his 40th birthday. Mr Capuçon’s most recent album, Gaïa, features sixteen works – inspired by nature and the Earth – written for him by composers from a broad cultural spectrum.

Gautier Capuçon also appears on a number of live DVDs, such as his performance of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, and that of Brahms’s Double Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili and the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Christian Thielemann.

In addition to his myriad performance commitments, the cellist is an ambassador for the “Orchestre à l’École” non-profit organisation, bringing music to young people in school settings through learning programmes lasting three to four years. Today, there are 1,630 school orchestras composed of some 44,000 children spread across the near-entirety of France. Since its founding, more than 184,000 students have benefitted from this initiative.

In January 2021, Mr Capuçon was promoted to the rank of Chevalier in France’s Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur.

From 2019 through 2025, he hosted Les Carnets de Gautier Capuçon, a popular programme broadcast weekdays from 5 to 6 p.m. on France’s Radio Classique. An established celebrity in his home country, he frequently makes television appearances and has served as a judge on the France 2 television show Prodiges since the programme’s inception in 2014, a broadcast that annually draws more than three million viewers over the year-end holiday season.

Born in Chambéry, France, in 1981, Gautier Capuçon began playing the cello at the age of five with Augustin Lefèbvre and studied in Paris with Annie Cochet-Zakine, Philippe Muller, then in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. He has been awarded several first prizes in international competitions, including the Premier Grand Prix at the Concours International André Navarra in Toulouse.

Salvatore Sciarrino has already written three operas and a concert cycle for him. In 2017 the versatile artist made his highly regarded conducting debut at the Staatsoper Berlin with Aribert Reimann's "Gespenstersonate". Upcoming projects are the premiere of the opera "Violetter Schnee" by Beat Furrer under the direction of Matthias Pintscher and Claus Guth, and the premiere of the reworking of Jörg Widmann's "Babylon" directed by Daniel Barenboim and Andreas Kriegenburg, both at the Staatsoper Berlin, the premiere of "Thérèse by Philipp Maintz at the Salzburger Osterfestspielen and the Hamburgischen Staatsoper, for which he wrote the libretto, and in which he will also sing the role of "Laurent", as well as a concert tour with "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" by Gustav Mahler and directed by Maxime Pascal. 

He is the percussionist of the Ensemble recherche since 1988.

Together with Marcus Weiss and Nic Hodges he forms the trio accanto. In addition to his performances of new music, he has focused on non-European music and free improvisation.

He has given solo concerts throughout Europe. In the season 2010/11 he was one of the "Rising Stars" from the European Concert Hall Organisation.Important appearances include: Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Athens, Berliner Festspiele, Brussel Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Huddersfield Festival, Lucerne Festival, Monday evening concerts Los Angeles, Rachmaninov Hall Moskau, Festival d'Autome Paris, Ircam Paris, Rome, Salzburg Festival, Schleswig Holstein Festival, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Wien Modern, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Zürich Festival für neue Musik and others.

He has recorded for several labels including Kairos, col legno, Stradivarius, Winter & Winter, neon and his recordings have been the recipients of numerous awards.

Christian Dierstein works together regulary with several of the greatest living composers, figures such as Hans Abrahamsen, Beat Furrer, Hugues Dufourt, Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino.

Since 2001 he is Professor for percussion and new chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, Switzerland.

He gave masterclasses in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Genf, Madrid, Moskau, New York, Oslo, Peking, Valencia, Tiflis and others. Since 2008 he is one of the percussion tutor of the Darmstädter summer courses, since 2011 he is the percussion tutor of the Impuls academy in Graz, since 2014 regular guest teacher in Madrid and 2017 tutor of the Luzern academy.