Music Chamber

Zara Benyounes & Emily Holland - violins, Sara Roberts - viola, Kim Vaughan - cello

Haydn: String Quartet in F Op 77/2
Brahms: String Quartet in a Op 51/2

The members of the Benyounes Quartet hail from England, Wales and Ireland and are united by their love of chamber music and enthusiasm for communicating with audiences. They met at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2007, where they were recipients of major prizes for string quartet. Winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious Julius Isserlis Scholarship, the quartet continued studies at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève with Professor Gabor Takacs–Nagy.

From September 2011, the Benyounes Quartet will hold the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship for String Quartet at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Recently chosen as Park Lane Group Young Artists, the quartet will give their Purcell Room debut in January 2012.

The quartet has appeared in recitals for music societies and festivals across Europe. This summer they are invited to Dartington Summer Music as string quartet in residence, and will also give recitals at West Cork Chamber Music Festival and Bellerive Festival in Switzerland. Other notable performances in the 2010/11 season included a recital at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and a tour of South West Scotland. In the summer of 2010, they were invited to perform an exciting new collaborative work by a young British composer in Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, and Aldeburgh Festival.

In 2008 the quartet was accepted onto the ProQuartet-CEMC program based in Paris offering them the opportunity to work with Eberhard Feltz and members of the Alban Berg and Cleveland string quartets. They were selected to attend IMS Prussia Cove and the Britten-Pears International Academy of String Quartets, and have participated in masterclasses with Gyorgy Kurtag, Andras Keller, David Waterman and Christoph Richter. The quartet is grateful for the continued support of Quatuor Ebene with whom they receive regular coaching in Paris.

The quartet continues to broaden its repertoire by initiating collaborative chamber music and cross-arts projects, and has recently founded Quercus Ensemble, a mixed chamber music group based in Northern Ireland.