Elias String Quartet

Britain's Elias String Quartet has earned distinction for its impassioned and commanding accounts of the central string quartet literature, notably through a widely praised traversal of all sixteen Beethoven quartets. The ensemble derives its title from Mendelssohn's oratorio Elias, the work known in English as Elijah.

The four musicians first came together at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music in 1998 under the guidance of coach Christopher Rowland. They later continued their studies at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik with members of the Alban Berg Quartet and have drawn on the counsel of György Kurtág, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and Henri Dutilleux, among others. Following their selection as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists in 2009, the group received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and began appearing regularly at leading concert halls across Europe and the United States. American engagements have included recitals at Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress; the quartet has also joined pianist Jonathan Biss for tours that yielded Onyx recordings of the Schumann and Dvořák piano quintets.

Its debut release, devoted to Mendelssohn, appeared on the ASV label in 2007. Between 2011 and 2015 the Elias String Quartet presented the complete Beethoven cycle at London's Wigmore Hall, with the resulting recordings issued on the hall's own imprint beginning in 2015; the fourth volume reached the public in 2018. The ensemble has actively promoted new music by Sally Beamish, Colin Matthews, Matthew Hindson, Huw Watkins, and Timo Andres while collaborating closely with Henri Dutilleux on his Ainsi la Nuit. For four years it served as resident quartet for Sheffield's Music in the Round series. Scheduled appearances in 2018 encompassed a concert at Lisbon's Gulbenkian Foundation, a residency at the University of Iowa, a program on the University Musical Society series in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the three-evening "After Beethoven" project presented with the Martin Randall Holiday in Lavenham, U.K.