The Gringolts Quartet is known for its luminous, unified and at the same time highly nuanced ensemble sound. Its interpretations are characterized by great musical maturity and impressive technical mastery, always in the service of the music. The Zurich-based quartet was founded in 2008. Its members are the first violin Ilya Gringolts, who has Russian roots, the Armenian violinist Anahit Kurtikyan, the Romanian violist Silvia Simionescu and the German cellist Claudius Herrmann.
The Gringolts Quartet performs regularly in prestigious concert halls and at renowned festivals, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Konserthuset in Stockholm, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the Auditori in Barcelona, the festivals of Edinburgh, Gstaad, Lucerne, Salzburg and Verbier and the Settimane musicali Ascona.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season include(d) a tour of Sweden and returns to the Philharmonie de Luxembourg, the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival in Basel and the Salzburg Festival.
The Quartet enjoys musical partnerships with artists such as James Boyd, Malin Hartelius, Alexander Lonquich, Andreas Ottensamer, Christian Poltéra, Katia Skanavi and Jörg Widmann, and performs regularly in larger formations. In 2025/26 it appeared with the violists Lilli Maijala and Lily Francis at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and in Naples respectively.
Contemporary music is a central focus of the Quartet’s activities. It has performed works by composers including Marc-André Dalbavie, Heinz Holliger, György Kurtág, Valentin Silvestrov, Lotta Wennäkoski and Jörg Widmann.
The Gringolts Quartet has received much attention for its award-winning CD recordings, including the first recording of Walter Braunfels’s quintets with the cellist David Geringas (ECHO Klassik), quintets by Glazunov and Taneyev with Christian Poltéra (Diapason d’Or) and octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu with Meta4 (German Record Critics’ quarterly Award). The Quartet’s outstanding Schoenberg expertise is highlighted in its recordings of his string quartets; its recording of Nos 1 and 3 received a Diapason d’Or. In 2024 the Gringolts Quartet released a recording of the Brahms string quintets with Lilli Maijala on BIS (BBC Music Magazine — Recording of the Month). The Quartet is currently preparing two new albums featuring works by Mozart and Dvořák, recorded on gut strings.
All members of the Gringolts Quartet play on rare Italian instruments: Ilya Gringolts on a Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, Cremona 1743; Anahit Kurtikyan on a Camillo Camilli violin, Mantua 1733; Silvia Simionescu on a Jacobus Januarius viola, Cremona 1660, and Claudius Herrmann on a cello by Maggini Giovanni Paolo, Brescia 1600.
