News
Utopia
The delian::quartett is looking forward to its new collaboration with Ute Lemper.

projects
Projects
What makes a genuine Delian project?
One passion of the delian::quartett is to venture (alongside its “normal” core business as a string quartet) into places where no one has ever gone before.
It all begins with a crazy idea. A daring notion beyond well-worn paths. The rest is extensive research and meticulous conceptual work — a journey across open country that sometimes takes months.
And at the end stands an adventure that the creators themselves wanted to see on stage: one of those extraordinary, often genre-crossing, present-day formats for which the delian::quartett is widely celebrated: innovative, lovingly crafted, moving, illuminating, amusing, and always distinctive. An experience you will search for in vain on your sofa at home.
Curious? Curtain up…
Biography
Adrian Pinzaru | violin
Andreas Moscho | violin
Lara Albesano | viola
Hendrik Blumenroth | violoncello
“Original and brimming with esprit, dramaturgically daring and thrilling in its content: even longtime regulars of the concert series will find little in their memories to match an evening in which all these qualities were woven together as artfully and convincingly as in the performance of the Delian Quartet. […] If proof were ever needed of the ensemble’s extraordinary class — in these breathless seconds it flared up with the force of a supernova. […] Thanks for opening a new door into the world of music.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
The delian::quartett’s namesake is the Greek god Apollo, worshipped as the god of the fine arts and of the Muses — especially of music — and also called “Delian” after his birthplace, the island of Delos.
Since its founding in 2007, the delian::quartett has given performances acclaimed equally by audiences and press throughout Europe, in China, and — as a cultural ambassador of the Goethe-Institut — as far afield as Africa. Its 2009 debut at the Berlin Philharmonie was met with a standing ovation already after the opening piece. Since then, the ensemble has been a celebrated guest in venues such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Prinzregententheater Munich, Unione Musicale Turin, Konzerthaus and Musikverein Vienna, Tonhalle Zurich, Beethovenfest Bonn, Kissinger Sommer, Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele, südtirol festival meran, Rheingau Musik Festival, Salzburg Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Schubertiade Roskilde, and many more. Its unconventional and richly allusive programming has long made the delian::quartett’s concert projects distinctive and a hallmark of the ensemble.
The quartet maintains an active collaboration with broadcasters such as SWR, HR, WDR, Catalunya Música, Radio France, Danmarks Radio, BR, NDR, SR, ORF, and Deutschlandfunk. The ensemble’s CD recordings for the label OehmsClassics reached top positions on the classical charts, were presented as the editor’s choice by various broadcasters, and were chosen multiple times for Lufthansa’s Album Selection. Its second CD, featuring the music of Joseph Haydn, received an ECHO Klassik award nomination in 2010. The acclaimed performance of Chausson’s Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Op. 21, with the delian::quartett, Liza Ferschtman, and Benjamin Moser, was included as a live recording in the anniversary edition of the Piano Festival Ruhr in 2018. The same year saw the release of the double CD “Cantai”, featuring Bach’s “The Art of Fugue” alongside Stefano Pierini’s work “Cantai un tempo…”, written for the delian::quartett. That recording received, among other honors, the maximum five stars from the Italian magazine ARCHI and a nomination for the OPUS KLASSIK 2019.
A major commitment of the delian::quartett is the expansion of the repertoire. It has given world premieres of works by living composers Alberto Colla, Per Arne Glorvigen, Gabriel Iranyi, Christian Jost, Stefano Pierini, and Uljas Pulkkis; most of these compositions are inscribed to it. In 2019, Aribert Reimann dedicated his last completed work — his adaptation of Schumann’s song cycle “Frauenliebe und Leben” (A Woman's Love and Life) — to the delian::quartett and soprano Claudia Barainsky, who premiered it together at the Berlin Philharmonie. In 2024, the legendary label ECM Records released the album “Im wachen Traume”, featuring, among other things, the world premiere recording of this work. Described as an “original recording of rare beauty” (nikonland.it), “Im wachen Traume” has been a classical music recommendation, must-listen, Choix Musical, or Sélection Disques for various European broadcasters and print media, and was included on the longlist for the German Record Critics’ Award (Deutscher Schallplattenpreis). In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, critic Wolfgang Schreiber named the album the most beautiful CD of the summer, and the magazine Fono Forum awarded it the coveted “Star of the Month”, with maximum ratings in every category.
With "Let's Get Classical!", the Delian format for young people and the young at heart, the ensemble also wins over concert newcomers to classical music. The delian::quartett has regularly performed and continues to perform alongside artists and ensembles including Gilles Apap, Fabio Bidini, Measha Brueggergosman, Gérard Caussé, the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, Stella Doufexis, Andreas Frölich, Pavel Gililov, Bernd Glemser, Per Arne Glorvigen, Jens Harzer, the Henschel Quartet, Julia Hülsmann, Ralph Manno, Sergei Nakariakov, Ulrich Noethen, PiedraMudaLAB, Menahem Pressler, Dora Schwarzberg, Peter Shub, Peter Simonischek, Ulrich Tukur, Anatol Ugorski, and Angela Winkler. With the great actor Bruno Ganz, the Delians shared ten years of their artistic career until his death in 2019, in various acclaimed spoken-word reading projects.
Since 2017, the members of the delian::quartett have been united as Pirastro Artists in a partnership with the renowned string manufacturer. Adrian Pinzaru plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Rogeri, 1699, generously passed on by Christine Anderson; Andreas Moscho’s violin is the Giovanni Battista Rogeri “Christmas”, circa 1690. Lara Albesano’s viola by Alfonso Della Corte, 1884, is on permanent private loan.

Media

Im wachen Traume
Schumann/Reimann
Byrd/Pierini
Purcell
with Claudia Barainsky | soprano
released by ECM
Education

Kids' Concerts & Masterclasses
An investment in the future is passing on first-hand acquired knowledge about the culture and technique of string quartet playing. The delian::quartett’s tradition in this reaches back to the golden age of ensembles like the Amadeus Quartet or the Borodin Quartet.
And, as one would expect, the delian::quartett’s riotously funny children’s concerts likewise blaze their own trail.
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