Coull Quartet
About the Coull Quartet
The Coull Quartet were formed in 1974 by students at the Royal Academy of Music and rapidly achieved national recognition, being appointed Quartet-in-Residence at Warwick University in 1977, a post which they held for over forty years.
The Quartet has made over 30 recordings, including the complete Mendelssohn and Schubert quartets, and 20th century and contemporary British chamber music. They have toured in Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, China, India and the Far East. Their commissions include works by Sally Beamish, Edward Cowie, Joe Cutler, David Matthews, Nicholas Maw, Robert Simpson and Howard Skempton, in various formats, including a piece for quartet and table tennis players.
The rare combination of maturity and freshness which characterises the Quartet’s performances is often singled out by reviewers.
The Coull Quartet thrilled a packed audience with a gossamer light Mozart quartet, which nonetheless exhibited some fine technical writing, a deeply sad Shostakovich quartet as relevant to our times as to his when it was written (1949), and a deft and exhilarating early Beethoven quartet. The quartet are celebrating an outstanding fifty year career together and were exhibiting their technical mastery and precision with a freshness and energy belying their years. This was their eighth visit to us over the course of their career.