Quatuor Arod

The Quatuor Arod pairs a striking visual presence with inventive readings that span the early Romantic period through the dawn of modernism. Several recordings by the ensemble have appeared on the Erato imprint.

Formed in 2013, the quartet came together while its original members—violinists Jordan Victoria and Alexandre Vu, violist Corentin Apparailly, and cellist Samy Rachid—were enrolled at the Conservatoire nationale supérieure de musique in Paris. Even after establishing themselves on the concert circuit, the players continued working with Mathieu Herzog and Jean Sulem. Tanguy Parisot eventually took over the viola chair from Apparailly. The ensemble’s name derives from a horse in The Lord of the Rings. Early recognition arrived first with top honors at Copenhagen’s Carl Nielsen Chamber Music Competition and then with victory at Munich’s ARD International Music Competition.

Festival engagements have taken the group to Verbier and Montreux in Switzerland, to Aix-en-Provence and the Pablo Casals Festival of Prades in France, and to the Heidelberg and Rheingau events in Germany. By 2017 the quartet was performing regularly at such prominent European halls as the Louvre, the Philharmonie de Paris, and Wigmore Hall. It shared an artist-in-residence appointment at Brussels’s Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with the Artemis Quartett, co-commissioned a string quartet from Benjamin Attahir that same year, and has maintained ongoing partnerships with fellow chamber musicians.

A cluster of significant achievements marked 2017: the ensemble was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist through 2019, designated an ECHO Rising Star for 2018, and issued its debut Erato album devoted to Mendelssohn quartets. The Mathilde Album, containing works by Webern, Schoenberg, and Zemlinsky, followed in 2019, with a disc of Schubert quartets appearing the next year.