The Gildas Quartet
“Stunning piece, exquisite playing, beautiful video. We’re running out of superlatives!”
The Gildas Quartet is praised for its ‘energy, verve and refreshing approach’ and has performed to critical acclaim at major venues including the Barbican, Kings Place, Wigmore Hall and on BBC Radio 3. The Quartet, known for its bold and engaging performances, was recognised with the Audience Engagement Award first prize at the International Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition, Graz.
Passionate advocates of music from all periods, the quartet enjoys frequent collaborations with renowned musicians and composers. They have worked closely with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Colin Matthews, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Philip Cashian among others.
Determined to bring the visceral experience of string quartet performance to audiences at close quarters, the Gildas created a unique immersive concert project, ‘Surround Sound Sessions’. Each performance in this series brings a single great quartet work into the spotlight, inviting listeners to sit literally in ‘surround sound’ and experience the drama from the centre of the ensemble. The project has taken the quartet across Europe and is supported by the Help Musicians UK Do It Differently Fund.
“The Gildas Quartet has a certain raw sincerity which is infectious and addictive.
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“... it was the Gildas’s acute accounts of Emma-Ruth Richards’s accomplished short movement Marinela de Predare Plange, and Colin Matthews’s String Quartet No 4 (2012), a superbly inventive, seven-movement construction in a post-Brittenish mould, that really made the occasion worthwhile.”