Quartetto Artemis

When in 1989 the four young musicians - then still students at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck - gathered to perform as a quartet, they did not yet know that the Artemis Quartet would become an ensemble with such incisive artistic traits that it would overcome the singularity of the individual members. Today, all of the quartet's founding members have been replaced. Still, Vineta Sareika and Suyoen Kim (first and second violin alternating), Gregor Sigl (viola) and Harriet Krijgh (cello) follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. Thanks to accurate digital archives of all the past rehearsals, when the present musicians pick up a piece from the quartet's repertoire, they can carry on with the artistic intuitions that already belong to the ensemble's shared experience, adding each time something new.

In 2008, Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "It's a fact that a quartet can never replace two members without its character being affected. But I was struck by the similarities between before and after. The Artemis Quartet has always played with vigour, virtuosity and sensitivity, with clear ideas and spontaneous openness".