EnglishSinfonia
Maggini Quartet
William Berger
Ian Lake

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TheMaggini Quartet

Laurence Jackson - Violin I
David Angel - Violin II
Martin Outram - Viola
Michal Kaznowski - Cello

Formed in 1988, the Maggini Quartet is now established as one of the finest British string quartets, both in performance and through their international award winning recordings.

The Quartet are renowned for championing British repertoire. Worldwide sales of their recordings for Naxos's Gramophone Award winning British music series have exceeded 100,000 discs, and they have now won the Gramophone Chamber Music Award of the Year 2001 for their CD of Vaughan Williams, released in April 2001. Their recordings of Walton, Britten, E J Moeran and Arnold Bax have all been Editor's Choices in Gramophone, while their recording of Elgar with Peter Dohonoe won a Diapason d'Or of the Year in France and was also a CHOC award winner for "Le Monde de la Musique". A further seven CDs of British music will be released over the next four years, including works by Bridge, Bliss and John Ireland.

The Quartet's recordings also include Haydn Op.33 Quartets (Simax), awarded a maximum ten star-rating in France's Repertoire des Disques Compacts, Szymanowski/Bacewicz quartets (ASV), Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' (ASV) and Haydn Op.77 Quartets (Claudio).

The Maggini Quartet's commitment to new music has led to important commissions, including James MacMillan's Second Quartet, Robert Simpson's Cello Quintet (his last work) and works by Eleanor Alberga and Roxanna Panufnik.

Now they are embarking on an exciting collaboration with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, to perform and record ten new string quartets, the 'Naxos Quartets', which he will be writing over the next five years. Commissioned by Naxos, the works will fulfill the composer's long-held intention of bringing a major contribution to chamber music repertoire, and the project will provide a unique opportunity for performers and composer to work together over the five-year period.

The Maggini Quartet appear regularly in prestigious concert series at home and abroad and are frequent performers on BBC Radio 3. They recently launched a major new initiative, The Glory of the English String Quartet; concert performances over coming seasons, together with their ongoing recordings for Naxos, will draw upon the wonderfully varied and distinctive repertoire, mostly from the first half of the 20th Century, which they are committed to bringing to a worldwide audience.

In addition to their concert activity, the members of the Quartet have an international reputation as chamber music coaches. They hold several UK residencies, have worked at the UK's senior music institutions, and their educational activities abroad have included coaching at Yale and Oberlin in the United States and an annual coaching engagement for the Norwegian Chamber Music Society.

The Quartet's name derives from the famous 16th century Brescian violin maker Giovanni Paulo Maggini, an example of whose work is played by David Angel.

Link to the Maggini Quartet website.