She studied in Sibelius Academy, Musikhochschule Hannover and Musik-Akademie Basel with Lara Lev and Rainer Schmidt among others. She has also won prizes in the Brahms, Lyon, ARD, Banff and Citta di Pinerolo chamber music competitions. Simonen has won top prizes in several major international violin competitions including the Flesch, Lipizer and Cremona competitions. She is the leader of Castalian String Quartet and the violinist of Calvino Piano Trio. The Finnish violinist Sini Simonen enjoys an active international career as a chamber musician and soloist. When not on stage, Finnish first violinist Sini Simonen bags Munros, Irish violist Ruth Gibson teaches yoga and the Welshmen, second violinist Daniel Roberts and cellist Steffan Morris, get overly emotional about rugby. Committed to inspiring a diverse audience for classical music, the Castalians have performed everywhere from the great concert halls to maximum security prisons and even the Colombian rainforest. According to Greek mythology, the nymph Castalia transformed herself into a fountain to evade Apollo’s pursuit, thus creating a source of poetic inspiration for all who drink from her waters. The quartet’s name is derived from the Castalian Spring in the ancient city of Delphi. The Castalian String Quartet’s 2022 release Between Two Words (Delphian Records), presenting music by Orlando di Lasso, Thomas Adès, Ludwig van Beethoven and John Dowland, was given a double five-star review as BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Album of the Month’: “this outstanding disc offers listeners a true philosophical journey…a series of intricately connected works, each performed with rare beauty and originality by a quartet at the height of its powers… is nothing short of a revelation in its lucidity of line and sheer beauty of sound.” Recent and upcoming premieres include works by Charlotte Bray, Edmund Finnis, Mark Simpson, Simon Rowland-Jones and Sir Mark-Anthony Turnage. The quartet often appears at festivals such as Spoleto USA, Aldeburgh, North Norfolk, Cheltenham, East Neuk, Lockenhaus and Heidelberger Frühling. Their next Wigmore Hall cycle will feature all three quartets by Benjamin Britten. In 2018 they recorded Haydn’s Op.76 quartets for the Wigmore Live label and were joined by pianists Stephen Hough and Cédric Tiberghien, violist Isabel Charisius and clarinetist Michaels Collins for a Brahms and Schumann series in the 2019-20 season. The Castalian String Quartet performs frequently at the Wigmore Hall in its home city of London. Recent debuts include New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Paris Philharmonie and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The ensemble was named Young Artist of the Year at the 2019 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. They were awarded First Prize at the 2015 Lyon International Chamber Music Competition and in 2018 were recipients of the inaugural Merito String Quartet Award and Valentin Erben Prize, and a prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. Gaining renown for interpretations “full of poetry, joy and sorrow, realised to such perfection” (The Observer), they have recently been announced as the first Hans Keller String Quartet in Residence at the University of Oxford.įormed in 2011, the quartet studied with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule für Musik, Hannover, before being selected by the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2016. The Castalian String Quartet is taking the international chamber music scene by storm. The Sibelius Academy Quartet made the world premiere studio recording of the A minor Quartet for Finlandia in 1985.Royal Philharmonic Society prizewinners and resident ensemble at Oxford University, the Castalian Quartet is in-demand on the world stage. The fourth movement, marked Allegro, is in 4Ĥ time it has a duration of about seven minutes. The third movement, marked Vivace, is in 3Ĥ time it has a duration of about five minutes. The second movement, marked Adagio ma non tanto, is in 9Ĩ time it has a duration of about seven minutes. The first movement begins with an Andante in 6Ĥ for the Allegro. The piece was published posthumously in 1991 by Fazer Music.
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