Biography
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Years Active
1983 – present (42 years)
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Members
- Catherine Mackintosh (1983 – present)
- Catherine Weiss
- Elizabeth Wallfisch (1983 – present)
- Richard Boothby (1983 – present)
- Robert Woolley (1983 – present)
Although founded in 1983, The Purcell Quartet gave its debut recital after six months’ intensive preparation, on 14 February 1984 at St John’s, Smith Square in London, and has since then undergone just one change of membership, Catherine Weiss replacing Elizabeth Wallfisch as second violin. Through twenty-five years and nearly fifty recordings of a huge range of repertoire, the group has established itself as a leader in the area of baroque chamber music. Nor is its repertoire limited by size: it has taken fully staged productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Orfeo to Japan. It also embarked on a series of concerts devoted to the music of Bach at the Wigmore Hall, presenting masses, harpsichord concerti, and cantatas, in which it has collaborated with the very finest singers, among them Susan Gritton, Nancy Argenta, Catherine Bott, Emma Kirkby, Julia Gooding, Michael Chance, Dominique Visse, Guy de Mey, Mark Padmore, Charles Daniels, Peter Harvey, and Richard Wistreich. The Quartet has toured the world, including the USA, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Japan, Turkey, and all the countries of Europe. In the United Kingdom it has played at most of the major music festivals, recorded extensively for the BBC, and toured several times with the Early Music Network. During the Bach year, 2000, it presented several programmes of Bach’s music, including two concerts of early cantatas at the Spitalfields Festival, Lutheran Masses in Budapest, harpsichord concerti in Salzburg, and a sell-out concert at the Wigmore Hall of funeral cantatas on the very day of the anniversary, 28 July 2000. Another sell-out concert at the Wigmore Hall in 2009 celebrated the 350th anniversary of the birth of Henry Purcell. The Purcell Quartet has recorded exclusively for Chandos Records since 1987, its discography now numbering nearly forty discs.
(Peter Holman, from the booklet of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu nostri, Chandos CHAN0775)
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