Marmen Quartet
About the Marmen Quartet
With a growing reputation for the courage, vitality and intensity of its performances the Marmen Quartet is fast establishing itself as one of the most impressive and engaging talents in the chamber music arena. 2019 marked a year of significant achievement for the Quartet, with First Prizes at both the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition and Banff International String Quartet Competition, where they were also awarded the Haydn and Canadian Commission prizes. Other accolades include first prize at the Royal Overseas League Competition (2018) and awards at the International Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition.
The Marmen Quartet has performed at leading European venues including Wigmore Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Boulez Saal, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Stockholm Konserthuset, Milton Court (Barbican), Palladium Malmö and Muziekgebouw Eindhoven. Festival engagements have taken the Quartet to the BBC Proms, Lockenhaus, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Rheingau, Heidelberg and Zeister Musiekdagen Festivals as well as the Amsterdam, Barcelona and Gulbenkian Foundation String Quartet Biennale Festivals.
On Saturday 11 October 2025 the Marmen Quartet got the Berkhamsted Music season off to an outstanding start with spellbinding performances of string quartets across three centuries. Haydn’s Op 50 No.5 (1787) was a scintillating opener, where the performance matched the brilliance of the writing. Bartók’s second quartet (1918), written at one of the low points in Hungary’s history, made for a sombre but musically stunning, deeply affecting conclusion to the first half. At the start of the second half, Violist Bryony Gibson-Cornish described how she has recently acquired her Amati viola, made in 1610. Debussy’s ageless string quartet of 1893 has rarely sounded better than in this group’s performance and provided considerable scope to appreciate and enjoy the wonderful sound Bryony gets from her Amati.