Recognised as one of the world’s premiere string quartets, the Takács Quartet is renowned for its ability to fuse four distinct, expressive musical personalities into gripping, unified interpretations.

Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet performs ninety concerts a year worldwide, appearing throughout Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. The Quartet members are Associate Artists at the Southbank Centre in London, performing several concerts there each year. In 2008-09 the Quartet built its London programmes around the music of Schumann, culminating in a recording of the piano quintet with Marc-André Hamelin in May 2009.

Other highlights of the 2008-09 season included the world premiere and subsequent performances throughout Europe of a quartet written for them by Wolfgang Rihm, three concerts to celebrate the reopening of New York’s Alice Tully Hall featuring the complete Bartók cycle and a tour to Japan and Korea in June 2009. In a North American tour, the Quartet continued its collaboration with the Hungarian folk ensemble Muzsikás and singer Márta Sebestyén.

The Quartet’s multi-award winning recordings include the late quartets by Beethoven, which in 2005 won Disc of the Year and Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine and a Japanese Record Academy Award. Their recordings of the early and middle period Beethoven quartets collected a Grammy and another Gramophone Award, a Chamber Music of America Award and two further awards from the Japanese Recording Academy.

In 2005 the Takács Quartet signed a contract with Hyperion Records. A disc featuring Brahms’ Piano Quintet with Stephen Hough was released to great acclaim in November 2007. Brahms’ Quartets Op 51/1 and 67 were released in autumn 2008, and a disc featuring the Schumann Piano Quintet with Marc-André Hamelin was released in 2009. The Quartet has also made sixteen recordings for the Decca label since 1988, winning a variety of awards.

The Quartet is known for innovative programming. In 2007 it performed with Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman at Carnegie Hall in a programme inspired by a Philip Roth novel. In May 2008 the Quartet performed a new piece commissioned by the Southbank Centre by James MacMillan. The Takács Quartet has performed a music and poetry programme on a fourteen-city US tour with poet Robert Pinsky.

At the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet has helped to develop a string programme with a special emphasis on chamber music. The Quartet also holds summer residencies at the Aspen Festival and at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. The Takács is a Visiting Quartet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér. In 2001 it was awarded the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross by the Republic of Hungary.