Heath Quartet - About

We were thrilled to join the BBT family last year having been awarded the Special Ensemble Award. It has been an invaluable part of our development as a quartet, and the support given by the BBT team continues to enable our dreams to come true!

One of Britain’s most acclaimed string quartets, the Heath Quartet has built a strong reputation for its dynamic and committed performances. The first ensemble in 15 years to win the 2013 Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious young artist award, the quartet made another notable splash with a Gramophone Award for its recording of Tippett’s string quartets. Its players balance a busy performance schedule, including dedicated series and residencies in major European venues and festivals, with teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

With its BBT funding the Quartet balanced the practical with the creative. New concert clothes, photographs, website and computer updates were funded, as well as further coaching, but the main thrust was a pair of recordings for Harmonia Mundi. The first featured two Tchaikovsky quartets, followed by a 2-CD live recording of two extraordinary concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall of Bartók’s complete string quartets, a recording that was nominated for a Gramophone Chamber Music Award.

The Heath Quartet appears in one of the three films made about fellow BBT alumnus, James Baillieu, and regularly appears with BBT artistic collaborators that include the Elias Quartet and Alec Frank-Gemmill.

Heath Quartet was supported with a BBT Special Ensemble Scholarship between 2011 and 2017.

For a current biography please visit heathquartet.com

Read a blog by Peter Quantrill, Bartók Live – Heath Quartet, here

Read a blog by the Heath Quartet, Oliver Heath’s Cycle in Salamanca, here

Press Release Bartók live recordings on Harmonia Mundi

Photographs by Patrick Ford