Kuss Quartet

Biography

"..provocative, driving, impassioned playing..the purity of sound was almost heavenly.."
(Houston Chronicle)

From the Carnegie Hall in New York to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, from the Wigmore Hall in London to the Berlin Philharmonie, the four musicians of the Kuss Quartet have been invited not only to the most celebrated international concert halls but also to the most prestigious festivals, among them the Salzburg Festival, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg and the Edinburgh Festival.

The Kuss Quartet has given much thought on how to restore the string quartet to where it once stood: at the cutting edge of cultural and compositional life. Praise for their fresh approach came from the Frankfurter Allgemeine in 2005 - "Every note, every phrase, every new motif appeared dusted down questioned, and joyfully restored". Music of the past, played as music of the present. The repertoire of the Kuss Quartet spans from the renaissance and baroque, with transcriptions of vocal works by Orlando di Lasso and John Dowland and J.S.Bach's "Art of the Fugue", through to the present day. They have studied the works of György Kurtag and Helmut Lachenmann with the composers themselves and in addition to this they have given workshops at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, working intensively with the composition students.

The variation of partnerships and venues is as varied as the repertoire itself: The quartet frequently combine sound and word in the form of concert introductions, lecture recitals, and their own concert series' such as at the Hamburg Laeiszhalle, encompassing varied and specific themes. In their series "Kuss Plus" at Berlin clubs, they perform concerts with a variety of guests as varied as singers, comedians and hip hop artists. In cooperation with the main Berlin radio corporation, RBB, this has succeeded in bringing new and young audiences to concerts in a fresh and unconventional venue.

They have an established and celebrated relationship with the actor Udo Samel with whom they explore the subtle and homogenous discourse between music and literature. In October 2008 a CD combining music of Berg, Webern and Beethoven with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht will be released by SonyBMG.

In 2006 the quartet signed a long-term exclusive contract with Sony BMG, and a Haydn-CD was released as an introduction to this new relationship. In Autumn 2007 a CD called „Bridges“ was released, an exciting and experimental programme spanning works from Orlando di Lasso and Dowland, to Ades, Kurtag and Stravinsky. Highly acclaimed by audiences in the concert hall, this has now also been uniformly praised by the critics.

The ensemble also forms artistic collaborations with musical personalities such as Kim Kashkashian, Claron McFadden, Miklos Perenyi and Sharon Kam. The Berlin-based Kuss Quartet has won a number of first prizes, including the Borciani competition and the Deutschen Musikrat both in 2002, and in 2003 was chosen by the European Concert Hall Organsiation for the "Rising Stars" series

North American Representation

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