The Heath Quartet

The Heath Quartet formed in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music. There were selected for representation by YCAT, awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Special Ensemble Scholarship and in 2012 won the Ensemble Prize at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where they are now regular visitors. In 2016 they won the Gramophone Chamber Award for their recording of the complete string quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, and in May 2013 became the first ensemble in fifteen years to win the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artists Award.

Their award-winning release of the Tippett was followed by two discs recorded for the Harmonia Mundi/PIAS label featuring Tchaikovsky’s first and third quartets (November 2016) and the complete Bartók quartets (June 2017), the latter of which won the 2017 Limelight Chamber Music Award and was nominated for the 2018 Gramophone Chamber Music Award – both projects were part-funded by the Quartet’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Special Ensemble Scholarship 2011. Their most recent release on Signum Records with Carolyn Sampson features works by Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

The 2022/23 season sees the quartet embark on a tour to the US with music of Ravel, Britten, Haydn, Fanny Mendelssohn and Schubert. They continue their longstanding relationship with Mecklenberg Vorpommern summer festival and the Wigmore Hall, opening their Coffee Concert season. Other highlights include recitals with the Manchester Chamber and Bollington concert societies, Brighton Dome Coffee Concerts, St George’s Bristol and Britten Pears Arts.

Recent highlights include the completion of two season residency at the Boulez Saal Berlin, their Barcelona debut in Palau de la Musica Catalana with soprano Carolyn Sampson, a Beethoven series at Bath Festival, debuts at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Saffron Hall and Cheltenham Festival, as well as returns to Handelsbeurs Ghent, Aldeburgh and Norfolk & Norwich festivals.

On BBC Radio 4 The Heath Quartet invites us behind the scenes as they get ready to perform Schubert's poignant 'Death and the Maiden' string quartet, one of the pillars of the chamber repertoire.  Click here: > BBC Radio 4 'How to Play'

The Heath Quartet will play Death and the Maiden (Der Tod und das Mädchen) at St Mary's along with JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr BWV 662 and 'O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross' BWV 622; FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN: String Quartet Op. 9/2; JOSEF SUK: Meditation on an Old Czech Chora

On BBC Sounds hear The Heath Quartet when they join with Pianist Steven Osborne  to play Shostakovich's Piano Quintet in G minor, premiered in 1940 by the composer himself and the Beethoven Quartet. It harks back to classical forms and heralds the dark clouds of war which loomed large at the time.

Click here: > BBC Sounds Proms at Perth