Quatour Ebene

Countdown to 100: Five…

In 2029-30, Chamber Music Cincinnati will celebrate its 100th Anniversary. Only four other U.S presenters will have reached that milestone. (Kudos to St. Paul’s Schubert Club, the first to do so, in 1983!)

The six 2025-26 concerts comprise the first of five celebratory seasons that will culminate in a landmark.

Chamber Music Cincinnati and Memorial Hall welcome you to them all!

Four-time Gramophone Award Winner including Recording of the Year

“…a show-stopper: gleaming, vocal-like rhetorical freedom combining to dazzling effect.” – Gramophone

“Quatuor Ébène cements its place among elite string quartets.” – Washington Post

“…as satisfying as one could wish for.” – Washington Post

One of the “Ten Greatest String Quartet Ensembles of All Time” – BBC Music Magazine

Pierre Colombet, violin, Gabriel Le Magadure, violin Marie Chilemme, viola, Yuya Okamoto, violoncello

Each season, Chamber Music Cincinnati presents one of the five ensembles remaining active from the BBC-named “Ten Greatest String Quartet Ensembles of All Time.” This season, it is the surprising Cincinnati debut of the Quatour Ébène (surprising only because at 25 they have not been here before). Better late than never, we are confident.

A concert by the Quatuor Ébène is a musical and sensual happening. In the past two decades the quartet has set standards by making familiar repertoire accessible in new ways and by constantly seeking exchange with the audience. Last spring cellist Yuya Okamoto joined the Quartet, adding a new dimension.

Quatour Ébène was founded at France’s Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory in 1999. After studies with the Quatuor Ysaÿe, Gábor Takács, Eberhard Feltz and György Kurtág, the Ébène’s unprecedented success at the 2004 ARD Music Competition marked the start of their rise to fame. Numerous prizes and awards followed, including the Belmont Prize of the Forberg-Schneider Foundation (2005), the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (2007), and in 2019 the first ensemble ever honored with the Frankfurt Music Prize.

In addition to the traditional repertoire, the quartet explores other music genres. (“A string quartet that can easily morph into a jazz band” – New York Times, 2009). What began in 1999 as a distraction in the conservatory’s practice rooms, improvising on jazz standards & pop songs, has become a trademark. To date, the quartet has released four albums in other genres: Fiction (2010), Brazil (2014), Eternal Stories (2017) and “Waves” (2024), a new project with the electronic sound artist Xavier Tribolet. The free approach to various styles creates a tension that is beneficial to every aspect of their work.

Quatuor Ébène’s recordings of Bartók, Beethoven, Debussy, Haydn, Fauré and the Mendelssohn siblings, have received numerous awards, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and the Midem Classic Awards. Together with Antoine Tamestit, they recorded Mozart’s Quintets K. 515 and K. 516, released in spring of 2023 to accolades such as Choc Classica, Diapason d’Or, Gramophone Recording of the Month.

Foremost among their recordings are Beethoven’s 16 string quartets, recorded on six continents between May 2019 and January 2020. Followed their 20th stage anniversary, crowned this achievement by performing the complete Beethoven cycle in venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris, Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, and Carnegie Hall.

In January 2021, the quartet was appointed by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich to establish a string quartet class as part of the newly founded Quatuor Ébène Academy. More recently, the quartet has joined the Belcea Quartet to perform the Mendelssohn and Enescu octets. For the 23/24 season the Philharmonie Luxembourg has chosen the Quatuor Ébène as resident ensemble. Further recent highlights have been presenting John Adam’s Absolute Jest with the Luxembourg Philharmonic and concerts at the Salzburg Festival, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Athens’ Megaron, London’s Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall.

Instruments & bows

Pierre Colombet plays a 1717 Antonio Stradivari “Piatti” violin, kindly loaned by a generous sponsor through the Beare’s International Violin Society, as well as a 1736 Matteo Goffriller violin generously loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider, who also lent a bow by Charles Tourte (Paris, 19th century).

Gabriel Le Magadure also plays two violins: the “ex-Baron Rothschild” by Peter Guarneri of Venice kindly loaned by the Miller-Porter Collection through the Beare’s International Violin Society, and one .c1740 with a Guarneri label loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider. He plays a bow by Dominique Pecatte (ca.1845) also loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider.

Marie Chilemme plays two violas: the 1734 “Gibson” Stradivari, generously loaned by the Stradivari Foundation Habisreutinger, and one by Marcellus Hollmayr, Füssen (1625) loaned by Gabriele Forberg-Schneider.

Yuya Okamoto plays violoncello by Giovanni Grancino (Milan 1682).