Finzi Quartet

The Finzi Quartet has emerged as an important chamber group, championing not only the music of its namesake but also other British composers. The group has held several prestigious residencies. The Finzi Quartet was formed in the late 2000s decade when its members -- first violinist Sara Wolstenholme, second violinist Natalie Klouda, violist Ruth Gibson, and cellist Lydia Shelley -- were students at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. At first, the players were under the supervision of Christopher Rowland but soon began to earn scholarships and prizes that enabled it to broaden its experience. The quartet won a Tunnell Trust Award in 2008-2009, which brought with it a tour of Scotland. The following year it took second prize at the Trondheim International String Quartet Competition in Norway. The 2009-2010 season saw the Finzi Quartet make its debuts at Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room in London, prestigious venues for a brand-new chamber group. The group has appeared at the Harrogate and Cheltenham Festivals, and twice at the Aldeburgh Festival. The quartet won the Swiss Global Artistic Foundation International Competition in July 2010, not only joining that foundation's artist roster but also gaining the use for two years of an unusual set of instruments the foundation owned at the time: the quartet set, called "The Evangelists," was made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. The Finzi Quartet pursued further study, often aided by scholarship funding, at the Instituto Internacional de Musica de Camera de Madrid with Günter Pichler, at the London String Quartet Foundation, and in master classes with Gabor Takács-Nagy, Thomas Kemp, Alasdair Tait, among others. The group has held several important academic residencies, including one as Bulldog Junior Fellows at Trinity College of Music in 2019-2010 and a Junior Fellowship at the Royal Northern College of Music the following year. The Finzi Quartet has often performed and recorded British music of the 20th and 21st centuries. It has commissioned and performed new music under the auspices of Live Music Now and the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust, and it gives frequent concerts of new works around London and the UK. In 2010, the Finzi Quartet recorded John Tavener's Towards Silence for Signum Classics. It was heard on Resonus Classics in a recording of its namesake's voice-and-string quartet work, By Footpath and Stile, in 2019. The Finzi Trust has endorsed the quartet's use of Gerald Finzi's name. ~ James Manheim