QUARTET EBÈNE

Attending a Quatuor Ébène concert is a musical and sensual experience. Over the past two decades, the quartet has set standards by presenting familiar repertoire accessible in new ways, beyond perfection, and constantly seeking interaction with the audience.

After studying with the Quatuor Ysaÿe in Paris, as well as with Gábor Takács, Eberhard Feltz, and György Kurtág, their exceptional and unprecedented success at the 2004 ARD Music Competition marked the start of their rise to fame, which led to numerous awards and honours. In 2005, they received the Forberg-Schneider Foundation’s Belmont Prize; in 2007, they won the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Prize; and in 2019, they were awarded the Frankfurt Music Prize, the first time the prize had been awarded to a musical ensemble.

Alongside its traditional repertoire, the quartet explores other styles: “A string quartet that can easily transform into a jazz band,” noted by the New York Times in 2009. What started in 1999 as a pastime in the Conservatory’s rehearsal rooms, improvising over jazz standards and pop songs, has become Ébène’s hallmark. To date, the quartet has recorded three albums in the following genres: Fiction (2010), Brazil (2014), and Eternal Stories (2017). Their ability to blend different styles creates a dynamic energy that enriches every aspect of their artistic work. This versatility has been enthusiastically received from the very beginning by both audiences and critics.

The Quatuor Ébène’s recordings, dedicated to Haydn, Beethoven, Bartók, Debussy, Fauré, Mozart, and the Mendelssohn brothers, have received numerous awards, including the Gramophone Award, the ECHO Klassik Award, the BBC Music Magazine Award, and the MIDEM 2010 Award. In the 2015/2016 season, the ensemble focused on the lied genre, participating in the album Green (Mélodies françaises) alongside Philippe Jaroussky (2016 BBC Music Magazine Award), a Schubert album with Matthias Goerne (in arrangements by Raphaël Merlin for string quartet, baritone and double bass), and recorded their String Quintet with Gautier Capuçon. Together with Antoine Tamestit, Quatuor Ébène recorded Mozart’s string quintets K. 515 and K. 516, which were released in spring 2023. The album received several awards, including the Choc Classica, the Diapason d’Or, and the Gramophone of the Month. However, among all their recordings, the highlight is their recording of Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets, for which the quartet travelled across six continents between May 2019 and January 2020. With this complete cycle, Ébène celebrated its twentieth anniversary as performing artists, concluding with performances of the full series in major European venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris and the Alte Oper Frankfurt, as well as performances at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Verbier Festival, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna.

In January 2021, Quatuor Ébène was commissioned by the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts to establish a string quartet class as part of the newly launched Quatuor Ébène Academy.

Since the 2021/22 season, the Ébène has been performing a joint concert series with the Belcea Quartet at the Wiener Konzerthaus. In the 2023/24 season, the Philharmonie de Luxembourg selected Quatuor Ébène as its resident ensemble, and from 2022/23 to 2024/25, it held the position of resident quartet at Radio France, performing three concerts per season in Paris.

In January 2026, the Ébènes launched the String Quartet Biennial at the Philharmonie de Paris, once again featuring the Belcea Quartet, and they concluded it with John Adams’s Absolute Jest, performed alongside the Orchestre Français des Jeunes.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Suntory Hall, the quartet will perform the complete Beethoven string quartets in Tokyo. They will also launch new Beethoven cycles at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and Wigmore Hall in London.

All members of the quartet are honoured to play Stradivarius instruments.

Pierre Colombet plays an Antonio Stradivari 1717 violin, the Piatti, which has been kindly loaned to him by a generous sponsor through the Beares International Violin Society.

Gabriel Le Magadure, Marie Chilemme, and Yuya Okamoto play instruments generously loaned by the Stradivari Habisreutinger-Huggler-Coray Foundation: Gabriel plays the King George violin (1710); Marie, the Gibson viola (1734), and Yuya, the De Kermadec-Bläss cello (1698).