Ellipse Belinfante Quartet

• Caroline Shaw (b. 1982):
• 1 Shaw: Plan and Elevation: IV. The Orangery 02:19
• Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976):
• 2 Britten: Three Divertimenti: II. Waltz 02:59
• 3 Britten: String Quartet No. 2 in C Major: II. Vivace 03:42
• John Playford (1623 - 1686):
• 4 Playford: neere the Church doore (Arr. for string quartet by Arthur Klaassens): VI. Jenny Pluck Pears 02:25
• Total Runtime 11:25

Info for Ellipse

The ‘Ellipse’ is a timeless, never-ending orbit through space.

Planets and moons move around space creating ellipses and the different pieces of music in our album feel like they gravitate towards each other creating a universe of sound.

“Music contains all in sublime form. All human emotions are expressed; love, bliss, resignation, death. It can all be expressed by music. It is all within us. We make it, we compose it, we perform it.” (Frieda Belinfante)

Belinfante Quartet

The Belinfante Quartet
was formed in 2016 and since then has performed extensively in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. With the aim of sharing a passion for music with the wider public, they explore works from the core of the string quartet repertoire combined with lesser-known masterpieces. Kindly supported by Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, they are currently following lessons with Marc Danel at the Netherlands String Quartet Academy in Amsterdam and they are also studying at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover with Oliver Wille. They have recently been selected to take part in MUSA (European young MUsicians soft Skills Alliance), ideated by Le Dimore del Quartetto, a European professional training project for young string quartets supported by Erasmus+. In 2021 the quartet has been selected to take part in Le Dimore del Quartetto network.

The Belinfante Quartet also takes part in the SQBA Residency at the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam 2022.

They have performed at festivals throughout Europe including the String Quartet Biënnale Amsterdam, International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, the Grachtenfestival and the Tiberius Festival in Romania. Recent engagements include performances in TivoliVredenburg and in MuziekHaven Zaandam, where they played a live recital on NPO Radio 4 ‘Avondconcert’. They have also performed live on the Dutch television show ‘Podium Witteman’.

In addition to these activities, the Belinfante Quartet enjoys the opportunity to work with other artists. During the Delft Fringe Festival in June 2019, they collaborated with visual artist Jordi Cárdenas Lozano to create ‘Tchk-Tsjech!’, a performance in which the fairytale-esque music of Léos Janácek was accompanied by poetic and abstract slide projections. Their performance won them the Delft Chamber Music Festival Award 2019. In 2020, they played workshops and performances in secondary schools in Almere (NL) together with over 150 teenagers, in collaboration with urban dance group Static and Who’s Next.

With their name, the quartet would like to honour Frieda Belinfante, being a cellist and the first professional female conductor in Europe. Her sincerity, perseverance and fervour, in music as well as in other aspects of her life, form a magnificent source of inspiration.

This album contains no booklet.