Quatuor Sine Nomine

Originally based in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Quatuor Sine Nomine earned widespread recognition through its accounts of the complete string quartets by Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Bartók, together with an assortment of French and Swiss works for the medium. Its command of repertory proved equally assured across a broad span, extending from Boccherini and Haydn to the contemporary scores of Pärt and György Kurtág. When required, the ensemble enlarges its personnel to present music for quintet, sextet, and still larger groupings, a flexibility demonstrated in performances of the concertos for string quartet and orchestra by Schoenberg, Martinu, and Erwin Schulhoff. Yet the trait that most clearly separates the group from its peers is not its stylistic breadth or versatility but its deliberate reticence; the name Quatuor Sine Nomine was chosen precisely to place the music itself at the center of attention. That restraint has not impeded its visibility: the quartet has appeared at leading halls throughout Europe and the United States, among them Carnegie Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and London’s Wigmore Hall. A substantial discography exists as well, issued chiefly on the Claves and Cascavelle labels.

The ensemble was founded in 1975 by violinists Patrick Genet and François Gottraux, violist Hans Egidi, and cellist Marc Jaermann. Over the following decade its members steadily established themselves in Switzerland as one of the country’s most gifted young quartets. International attention arrived in 1985 with first prize at the Evian International Competition in France; two years later the group received the Jury of the Press Prize at the Borciani Competition in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Also in 1987 the quartet launched an extensive recording project—the complete Schubert quartets for Cascavelle—which concluded in 1994 with the release of the fifth volume. Greater international prominence followed throughout the 1990s, aided by a succession of well-received Claves discs that began in 1993 and included the Mozart quartets K. 387 and K. 464 in 1999. In 2001 the QSN inaugurated the Festival Sine Nomine, a biennial event held each late spring in Lausanne at which the ensemble or its individual members appear in most of the dozen-plus concerts. The year 2008 brought the quartet’s first recording for the CPO label: the Karl Goldmark piano quintets, Op. 30 and Op. 54. During the 2011 Festival Sine Nomine, presented 25–29 May, the programs featured Mozart’s complete quintets with two violas alongside works by Dowland, Britten, and Enescu.