Belcea Quartet

The Belcea Quartet came together in 1994 under the leadership of Romanian violinist Corina Belcea, who continues as first violinist under her married name, Corina Belcea-Fisher. At the time its original members—violinist Laura Samuel, violist Krzysztof Chorzelski, and cellist Matthew Talty—were all enrolled at London’s Royal College of Music. Later replacements saw Frenchman Axel Schacher take Samuel’s chair and compatriot Antoine Lederlin succeed Talty. Although the ensemble remains London-based, its personnel reflect a broad international makeup, with Chorzelski hailing from Poland and both Schacher and Lederlin from France; these varied national traditions inform the quartet’s interpretive approach. Several seasons of guidance from the Chilingirian Quartet, the Amadeus Quartet, and violinist Simon Rowland-Jones preceded the group’s competitive successes in Osaka and Bordeaux, which quickly established its international profile. Early BBC broadcasts helped secure a residency at Wigmore Hall that ran until 2006, by which point eight recordings had already appeared on EMI. One further EMI project followed in 2008 with a complete Bartók cycle. The quartet then shifted to Zig Zag Territoires in 2013 and to Alpha in 2015. Prestigious residencies have included posts at the Guildhall School, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and, beginning in 2017, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal. While celebrated for its traversals of core quartet literature—including a full Beethoven cycle issued by Zig Zag Territoires—the group also promotes new works by composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Joseph Phibbs. Its most recent release, from 2022, presents Brahms’s string sextets with violist Tabea Zimmermann and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.