Quatuor Varese
String quartet
Biography
François GALICHET and Rasmus Cornelius Hansen, violins
Jacques PEREZ, viola, Thomas RAVEZ, cello
The first thing to say is that the Varèse Quartet plays exquisitely…
It’s an ensemble that combines a wide range of tonal colors with a sensitive and vivid musical imagination. Richard Bratby, Gramophone
Heir to the great masters of its discipline and with its strong stage experience, the Varèse Quartet has acquired true recognition beyond its borders by distinguishing itself in the greatest international string quartet competitions.
In 2023, the Varèse quartet will share the stage with Anne Queffélec in Nancy, the bandoneonist Manu Comté at the Musiques Vivantes festival in Vichy, as well as with the clarinettist Pierre Genisson as part of the Musicales du Luberon.
The Varèse Quartet performs on numerous stages in France and abroad: Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (Germany); Concertgebouw, Bruges (Belgium); Centro Cultural Caja España-Duero, León (Spain); Algerian National Theatre, Palais de la Culture, Algiers (Algeria); Caliara Hall, Kilkenny (Ireland); Palazzeto Bru Zane, Venice (Italy); Tokyo, Iwaki (Japan); Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh, Utrecht (Netherlands); Palais Montcalm, Québec (Québec); Hôtel Soubise, Paris…
r: The ensemble has also received numerous awards, notably in 2012, when it brilliantly won the 1st Prize at the Hans Schaeuble Foundation Competition in Zurich, the 3rd Prize at the Franz Schubert and Contemporary Music Competition in Graz (Austria), and the Young Talents Prize in Paris. It was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Académie Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 2011 as well as the Special String Quartet Prize at the Ensemble Music Competition in Paris. In 2009, it won the 2nd ADAMI Prize at the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition and the Rotary Lions Prize.
Founded in 2006 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Lyon, the Varèse Quartet has received guidance from the Debussy, Ravel and Danel quartets. It then continued its career with the Ysaÿe Quartet and, thanks to ProQuartet-CEMC and NSKA, has enjoyed privileged contact with renowned musicians such as Heime Müller, Petr Prause, Stefan Metz, Rainer Schmidt and Natalia Prischepenko. The Quartet also perfected its skills with Miguel Da Silva in Geneva. In 2013, the Instituto Internacional de Música de Cámara in Madrid awarded it a scholarship to attend Günter Pichler’s masterclasses.
The Varèse Quartet’s discography includes three albums, two of which were recorded for NomadMusic, all of which have received critical acclaim. A new recording, “1893,” released in November 2019, is dedicated to Debussy, Dvorak, and Puccini.
The Varèse Quartet is supported by the Banque Populaire Foundation.
The Tranin-Camard violin workshop generously provides a music room for its rehearsals.
The Quartet also benefits from the support of the Zilber association, which lends it a Giuseppe Peluzzi violin and a Giuseppe Guadagnini viola.
Management: worldwide
Press
1893: the enchanting musicality of the Varèse Quartet
The interest also lies in discovering the immense sense of musicality of the Varèse Quartet. From the very first notes, the listener is enchanted and feels a smile rise within them. This is proof of talent, the result of hard work and the tenacious desire to make the works one’s own.
“This album reflects us because we’ve worked so hard. Music is a constant process. There are works that we’ve been playing for a longer or shorter time, works with which we have affinities from the start, and works for which the process of appropriation takes longer. We’ve been playing the Debussy Quartet for a very long time. So we were able to add something very personal to it. In that way, this work now reflects us. The American quartet, despite less affinities at the start, we worked on it so much, we managed, in my opinion, to make it our own as well. And so it now reflects us as well.”
…we admired the diamond of a Bartok quartet chiseled by the excellent Varèse Quartet in the church of Callian. This same young quartet accompanied a pianist of remarkable personality, Stephanos Tomopoulos, in a transcription of Beethoven’s 4th concerto.
String quartet festival in Pays de Fayence, Résonnances Lyrique, André PEYREGNE, September 2019.
The first thing to say is that Quatuor Varèse play exquisitely…
This is an ensemble that matches a vast range of tonal colour to a sensitive and vivid musical imagination.
… a magical debut from a quartet that’s clearly going places.
Richard Bratby, Gramophone
(…)Dutilleux’s great quartet, Ainsi la nuit, like Adès’s, is composed of a suite of seven movements, which form a continuous whole. Here again, the Varèses’ playing is marvelous, both taut in a single flow yet rich in a thousand sonic details. (…)
Founded in 2006 at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon, winners of major international competitions in Lyon, Zurich, Graz, Salzburg, and Reggio Emilia, the Varèse Quartet has produced a highly promising debut album, with a genuine commitment to contemporary music.
Resmusica, Florence Trocmé
The Varèse express this measured chaos, this question in the manner of a quest, which crosses all the sections in an ardent then recreational trance (fever becoming jazzy dance in the III). Until the last and 5th movement, which contrasts with the dreamy introspection of the preceding movement, proclaims an extroverted counterpoint, violently contrasted, – formal chaos which stops abruptly when the first initial motif breaks through, in the manner of a cyclical reiteration, affirming in conclusion the dense energy of the entire opus. Clarity, activity, precision of the lines in their expressive tangle, are the keys ideally realized by the strings of the Varèse Quartet.
About Glass Quartet No. 5.
Classiquenews.com, concert report Flam festival 2018/ Blaye)
…a pure jewel, with dazzling reflections… A distinguished elegance.
Franck Mallet, Musikzen
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Varèse quartet delivers a daring CD. Both in terms of the program and the performance. A complex score (in the “private joke” genre) by Thomas Adès, then the most elusive work by Henri Dutilleux (what’s more, in the year of the centenary of his birth) and, finally, the obligatory passage of experienced ensembles (French or not), by Maurice Ravel. A suite of seven movements with rebus-like titles – Venezia notturna, Et… (tango mortale), O Albion – Arcadiana is the work of a 23-year-old dandy who shines in postmodern disguise but keeps the listener at a distance through an excess of innuendo. Poisonous as can be (in the allusions to Mozart, Schubert and Elgar), the Varèse’s production takes up the challenge of “decomposition” set by Adès just as it magnifies that of “recomposition” imposed by Dutilleux in his principle of fragmented writing. Lively – sometimes a little too much – and biting, their reading of Ainsi la nuit is both faithful and personal. As for the perfectly executed fantasy of Dutilleux’s first model, it comes to us in the form of a supreme string quartet obtained with a turn of the bow perfectly in the style of master chef Ravel.
Pierre Gervasoni, Le Monde
1893 is a record we’re sure to love. The Varèse Quartet has developed a rich and personal sonic identity. It also knows how to work with repertoire by questioning it. Finally, it combines affinities to better differentiate them. A great Quartet from which we hope to release a new opus very soon.
Gang Flow, Anne-Sandrine Di Girolamo, Décembre 2019.