New Zealand String Quartet

Since 1987 the New Zealand String Quartet has been New Zealand’s leading chamber ensemble, with a distinguished record of international touring success and a body of acclaimed recordings. Much-loved by audiences at home and around the world, the Quartet performs over eighty concerts to popular and critical acclaim each year.

Career highlights have included winning two Aotearoa Music Awards (Best Classical Album in 2011 and Best Classical Artists in 2024), highly-praised performances in London at the Wigmore Hall, in New York at the prestigious Frick Collection and in Washington’s Library of Congress. In recent years the group has toured to Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom on a regular basis as well as performing in Mexico, Curaçao, Korea, Australia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden and China.

The Quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete Mendelssohn, Bartók, and Berg string quartets, works by Ravel, Debussy, Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák, and Wolf, as well as the premiere recording of the remarkable Zoltan Székely quartet. In February 2019 they released the final volume in a three-CD Brahms set for Naxos.

The ensemble has been Quartet-in-Residence at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University since 1991, where the members hold associate professor and lecturer positions. Violinist Helene Pohl and violist Gillian Ansell are co-artistic directors of the biennial Adam Chamber MusicFestival in Nelson, regarded as one of the foremost festivals of its kind in the southern hemisphere. The three longest-serving members have each been awarded the MNZM honour for services to music in New Zealand.