Castalian Quartet - Biography

Sini Simonen violin
Daniel Roberts violin
Ruth Gibson viola
Steffan Morris cello

In 2018 the Castalian String Quartet received the prestigious inaugural Merito String Quartet Award & Valentin Erben Prize and won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

This season the Quartet give debut concerts in New York (Lincoln Center), Washington D.C. (Phillips Collection), Montreal (Salle Bourgie), Vancouver Recital Series, Konzerthaus Vienna, Théâtre d’Orléans, Paris (Auditorium du Louvre), Brussels (Flagey) and Lucerne. They appear regularly in the main series at the Wigmore Hall and return to the Aldeburgh Festival and Saffron Hall.

Highlights over the last year have included performances of the complete Haydn Op.76 Quartets at Wigmore Hall, concerts in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and festivals including Heidelberger Frühling, East Neuk, Zwischentöne Festival in Engelberg, Neuchatel Chamber Music in Switzerland and Banff Centre International String Quartet Festival. Further afield they toured both China and Colombia.

The Quartet has performed widely throughout Europe as part of the Hamburg Chamber Music Series, International Musikfest Goslar, Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, “Quartetaffairs” in Frankfurt (broadcast by NDR), French festivals in Queille and Conques, and the Aldeburgh, East Neuk, North Norfolk and Peasmarsh Festivals. In 2017 they were resident at the Esbjerg international Chamber Music Festival in Denmark, Festival Musique d’Été à Suzette near Avignon and Snape Maltings. They have collaborated with Nils Mönkemeyer, Alasdair Beatson, Simon Rowland-Jones, Daniel Lebhardt and Olivier Stankiewicz, among many others.

Formed in 2011, the Castalian Quartet studied with Oliver Wille (Kuss Quartet) at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media, graduating with a Master’s degree. Awards include Third Prize at the 2016 Banff Quartet Competition and First Prize at the 2015 Lyon Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet was selected by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2016. They have received coaching from Simon Rowland-Jones, David Waterman and Isabel Charisius.

The Borletti-Buitoni Trust offers so much more than financial support – it is a family that nurtures and cares whilst giving young artists such as ourselves the opportunity to explore creative projects that would otherwise have remained mere pipe dreams.

Photographs by Paul Marc Mitchell