Pavel Haas Quartet
“Their sound is, as ever, immediately recognisable – partly due to the sheer richness of timbre but also the sense of four personalities at play… At times it is hard to believe you are in the presence of only four players, so intense is the sound.”
Veronika Jarůšková, first violin
Marek Zwiebel, second violin
Šimon Truszka, viola
Peter Jarůšek, cello
The Pavel Haas Quartet was founded in 2002 by the violinist Veronika Jarůšková and the violist Pavel Nikl, who was a member of the ensemble until 2016, when he left due to family reasons. Yet their collaboration has continued – Pavel Nikl has been the ensemble’s permanent guest for string quintet performances. Between 2004 and 2012, the second violin was played by Kateřina Gemrotová Penková, Marie Fuxová and Eva Karová Krestová. In 2016 and 2017, the viola was played by Radim Sedmidubský, in 2018 and 2019 by Jiří Kabát.
Following their victory in the Prague Spring Festival Competition and Premio Paolo Borciani in Reggio Emilia, Italy in 2005, the Pavel Haas Quartet soon established themselves as one of the world’s most exciting contemporary chamber ensembles. Performing at the most renowned concert venues around the globe, the PHQ have to date recorded six critically acclaimed CDs, which have received numerous prestigious awards. The ensemble members studied with Milan Škampa, the legendary violist of the Smetana Quartet.
In 2007, the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) named the Pavel Haas Quartet one of its Rising Stars, following which they were afforded the opportunity to give numerous high-profile concert appearances all over the world. Between 2007 and 2009, the Pavel Haas Quartet held the title of BBC New Generation Artist. In 2010, the ensemble was granted a classical music fellowship from the Borletti–Buitoni Trust.
This year the Pavel Haas Quartet will be celebrating their 20th anniversary. The venerable BBC Music Magazine has ranked the Pavel Haas Quartet among the 10 greatest string quartets of all time, alongside the Alban Berg Quartet, Amadeus Quartet, Borodin Quartet and other stellar ensembles.
The Pavel Haas Quartet records exclusively for the Supraphon label. The ensemble’s recordings include major works of the repertoire by Czech composers (Leoš Janáček, Pavel Haas, Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana) and foreign authors (Sergei Prokofiev, Franz Schubert, Dmitri Shostakovich), and in both areas they have won top international awards. For the eight albums released so far, the ensemble has earned the Gramophone Award six times (their recording of the Dvořák quartets was honoured as Recording of the Year), the BBC Music Magazine Award twice, in one case the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, and countless acknowledgements in review columns of prestigious media around the world. For the Franz Schubert recording, the guest cellist is Danjulo Ishizaka. The new album of the quintets of Johannes Brahms ties in with the recording of Antonín Dvořák’s quintets, when the Pavel Haas Quartet repeatedly invited the pianist Boris Giltburg and the violist Pavel Nikl to collaborate with them.
The quartet bears the name of the Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944), the most talented pupil of Leoš Janáček, who in 1941 was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezín ghetto and three years later died in Auschwitz. Pavel Haas’s oeuvre includes three splendid string quartets.
