The Harpham Quartet
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Harpham Quartet is steadily becoming regarded as a formidable new talent. Last year they were selected as Park Lane Group Young Artists and performed at the opening night of the 2008 New Year Series at the Purcell Room.
Recent performance highlights include appearances at the Wigmore Hall, Fairfield Halls, Conway Hall, Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow and Cadogan Hall, as 2008 ‘RCM Rising Stars’. Festival appearances include the Harrogate International Festival, Mostly Mozart at the Barbican, King’s Lynn and Chichester Festivities. Having given a successful concert at the Honiton Festival last year, they were invited back to perform with Emma Johnson MBE.
Prestigious performances of 20th and 21st Century works to date have included the chamber music of Mark Anthony Turnage for the 2008 BBC Proms Composer Portraits series which was broadcast by BBC Radio 3, the Malcolm Arnold Festival and the RCM Transcendent Festival: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann, for which their performance of the composer’s String Quartet ‘Grido’, received critical acclaim. In the summer of 2009 they will collaborate with the Medici Quartet in a UK premiere performance of Sir John Tavener’s ‘Towards Silence’ and in October will be returning to the Purcell Room in a performance of Peter Maxwell Davies’ fourth String Quartet.
The Harpham Quartet’s training took place at the RCM where they were awarded the Helen Just and Susan Connell Prize for Chamber Music. They attended the Britten-Pears 31st International String Quartet Academy, receiving coaching from Alistair Tate and the Alban Berg Quartet. The quartet has also received guidance from Irvine Arditti and the late Dr Christopher Rowland. They have performed in masterclasses with Gábor Takács-Nagy and members of the Arditti, Keller, Vermeer, Chilingirian, Endellion and Maggini Quartets.