The Vanbrugh, often styled The Vanbrugh and Friends and previously the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, is an Irish classical musical group. The resident string quartet to Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland's national broadcasting service, until 2013, and collectively artists-in-residence to

University College Cork University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) () is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, and located in Cork (city), Cork. The university was founded in 1845 as one of three Queen's Universit ...

, the Quartet members were also founders of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

Organisation and history

The group comprises Keith Pascoe on violins, Simon Aspell on viola and Christopher Marwood with cello, and they add 1-2 members for each performance. The quartet was co-founded with Gregory Ellis and was part of

RTÉ Performing Groups RTÉ Performing Groups was a performance group, operating over many decades, of five classical ensembles that were part of the Irish broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). All but the string quartet (originally the Vanbrugh Quartet, t ...

. The Vanbrugh Quartet also broadcasts frequently for

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

and performs regularly at London's

Wigmore Hall The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good building acoustics, acoustics. It specialis ...

and

South Bank The South Bank is an entertainment and commercial area on the south bank of the River Thames, in the London Borough of Lambeth, central London, England. The South Bank is not formally defined, but is generally understood to be situated betwe ...

. Past appearances include concerts in Berlin ( Konzerthaus), Amsterdam (

Concertgebouw Concertgebouw may refer to one of the following concert halls: * Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands * Concertgebouw, Bruges, Belgium * Concertgebouw de Vereeniging, Netherlands {{disambiguation Buildings and structures disambiguation pages ...

), Hungary ( Liszt Academy), Poland (Lancut Festival), Spain (Galicia Festival), Flanders Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad plus numerous visits to Scandinavia where recordings were made of the complete Beethoven quartets. The quartet tours the USA on a regular basis with performances in

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57t ...

, New York and the

Kennedy Center The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, commonly known as the Kennedy Center, is the national cultural center of the United States, located on the eastern bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Opened on September 8, ...

in Washington.

Recordings

Hyperion released two Vanbrugh Quartet CDs of chamber music by

Charles Villiers Stanford Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic music, Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was ed ...

. The Quartet's recent recording of three of Boccherini’s cello quintets on Hyperion was featured as Editor's Choice in Gramophone Magazine. Other recent CDs include Metronome's second CD devoted to the music of Belfast composer Piers Hellawell, a Black Box release of Ian Wilson's three quartets and a recording for Hyperion of works for quartet and soprano by

John Tavener Sir John Kenneth Tavener (28 January 1944 – 12 November 2013) was an English composer, known for his extensive output of choral religious music, religious works. Among his best known works are ''The Lamb (Tavener), The Lamb'' (1982), ''The ...

. These recordings join a discography of twenty-one releases which includes the complete Beethoven Quartets and works by Haydn, Schubert, Dvořák, Janáček, Dohnányi, E.J. Moeran, Robert Simpson, John Tavener, John McCabe, John Kinsella,

Raymond Deane Raymond Deane (born 27 January 1953) is an Irish composer. Biography Deane was born in Tuam, County Galway and brought up on Achill Island, County Mayo. From 1963 he lived in Dublin, where initially he studied the piano at the then College of ...

Brian Boydell Brian Patrick Boydell (17 March 1917 – 8 November 2000) was an Irish composer whose works include orchestral pieces, chamber music, and songs. He was Professor of Music at Trinity College Dublin for 20 years, founder of the Dowland Consort, co ...

and Walter Beckett.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rte Vanbrugh Quartet Classical music in Ireland Vanbrugh Quartet Musical groups from Cork (city) String quartets

Organisation and history

Recordings

See also

References

External links