Artemis-Quartett

The is one of today's internationally most renown string quartets of its generation. In 1989 four students of the Musikhochschule in Lübeck decided to establish a string quartet which they named "Artemis Quartet". The constellation of musicians has existed in its present form since 1994. They studied as a string quartet with Walter Levin in Lübeck and with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne. They recieved further important impulses by masterclasses with the Emerson and Juilliard String Quartets in the USA.

Following their prize at the Deutsche Musikwettbewerb in Bonn in 1995 came two further prizes of the most sought after prizes for string quartets: in 1996 first prize at the 45th International Music Competition ARD in Munich and in 1997 first prize international string quartet competition "Premio Paolo Borciani" in Italy. With these two major prizes, they began their debuts in the most important musical capitals in Europe and a tour through the USA.

In spite of their huge success, the Artemis Quartet makes a conscious effort to keep the quality of their musicianship as a first priority before a fast career. Since 1998, the Artemis Quartet has their residence in Vienna in order to enlarge and deepen their repertoire and musical knowledge through the competent and expert guidance of the Alban Berg Quartet.

In this sense, the quartet has accepted an invitation from the Berlin Science Academy for March 1999 to live and work intensively for three months and dedicate themselves to exchange experiences together with excellent personalities in other fields like physicists, authors, painters, historians, mathematicians etc. During this period of time, the Artemis Quartet had no concerts scheduled in order to concentrate on their experience and glance into other areas. They resumed their concert activities once again with a debut performance at the Berlin Philharmonic.