Quartetto Di Cremona - Biography

Quartetto di Cremona received support from BBT between 2005 and 2008, as well as for the release of its Beethoven complete string quartet cycle box set on Audite in 2018. For an up to date biography, go to www.quartettodicremona.com

Cristiano Gualco violin
Paolo Andreoli violin
Simone Gramaglia viola
Giovanni Scaglione cello

Awarded with the BBT Fellowship in 2005, the Quartetto di Cremona is the recipient of the second Franco Buitoni Award (2019), in recognition of their contribution in promoting and encouraging chamber music in Italy and throughout the world.

Since its formation in 2000, the Quartetto di Cremona has established a reputation as one of the most exciting chamber ensembles on stage, on air and on CD. Appearing across Europe, South America, the United States and the Far East, the Quartet has garnered universal acclaim for their extensive repertoire which ranges from early Haydn to contemporary music.

After a number of international competition successes, the Quartetto di Cremona received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005. The Quartet regularly appears at such venues as London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, Stockholm Concert Hall and Copenhagen’s Black Diamond and has collaborated with the likes of Lawrence Dutton, Edicson Ruiz, Andrea Lucchesini, Antonio Meneses and Emerson String Quartet.  Frequently giving masterclasses, since 2011 the Quartet has directed the Master’s programme for professional and advanced string quartets at Cremona’s Accademia Walter Stauffer.  In November of 2015 the Quartet was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Cremona.

Completed in 2017, the Quartet’s complete cycle of Beethoven’s quartets, on the German label Audite, has continued to garner awards from the first volume’s five-star review in BBC Music Magazine to the final volumes.  The seventh was given both the Supersonic Award by Pizzicato Magazine and the Echo Klassik 2017 prize, while in April 2018 the last two volumes won the ICMA 2018 award, citing the Quartet’s “overwhelming technical capacity and fantastic musicianship.”  The complete cycle is issued in a box set by Audite in June 2018, with support from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust.

Other recordings include the complete quartets of Fabio Vacchi (Decca, 2011) and Italian Journey, dedicated exclusively to Italian composers (2012).

The Quartetto di Cremona is kindly supported by the Kulturfond Peter Eckes, and is an ambassador for the international “Friends of Stradivari” project, through which its current instruments are the Stradivarius “Paganini Quartet” on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

The BB Trust has been for us a real change in our quartet life. In Italy, where chamber music and particularly string quartet playing is neglected, and where there are very few possibilities for a young group to develop and start a good career, winning the Fellowship enabled us to continue more serenely with our artistic development with the artists we really needed to work with throughout Europe. If we can now be appreciated as a quartet internationally it is very much because of the help we have received from the Trust and also the human contact that we get, which is normally lacking in these kind of organisations.

Photographs by Nikolaj Lund