Minguet Quartett

Ulrich Isfort, 1.Violin
Annette Reisinger, 2.Violin
Aida-Carmen Soanea, Viola
Matthias Diener, Violoncello

Founded in 1988, the Minguet Quartet is among the most internationally sought-after string quartets, and performs worldwide at all the great concert halls. The group takes its name from Pablo Minguet, an 18th-century Spanish philosopher who attempted in his writings to make the arts accessible to the masses – a concept that the Minguet Quartet is also committed to through its concert tours.

The Minguet Quartet’s performances at the 2024 Salzburg Festival mark the group’s fourth appearance at the Festival, following performances in 2020, 2021 and 2023. Highlights of 2024 include returns to the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Ludwigsburg Festival, the European Weeks Passau Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Klarafestival in Brussels. In 2022/23 the Quartet gave concerts at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Prinzregententheater in Munich, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg and at festivals in Düsseldorf, Innsbruck, Lausanne, Naples and Parma.

The ensemble has made guest appearances at venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Bozar in Brussels, the Southbank Centre in London, New York’s Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress in Washington and the University of Hong Kong. It has also performed at the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Brucknerfest in Linz, the Grafenegg Festival, the Paris Autumn Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Mozartfest in Würzburg, the Schwetzingen Festival, the music festival DIALOGE and the Tongyeong International Music Festival.
The Minguet Quartet concentrates equally on Classical-Romantic and modern repertory, and has given numerous world premieres of contemporary works. Encounters with contemporary composers constantly inspire the Quartet to come up with new programmes. Among its most important projects have been the complete recordings of the string quartets of Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka and Jörg Widmann, and the complete string quartet literature of Felix Mendelssohn, Josef Suk and Heinrich von Herzogenberg. In 2022 the Quartet released a recording of the chamber music of Walter Braunfels, and in January 2023 it released a disc of string quartets by Glenn Gould and Heinrich Kaminski.

In 2010 the Minguet Quartet received an ECHO Klassik, in 2015 the ensemble was awarded the French Diapason d’Or, and in 2020 it was selected for the Reload scholarship programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.