Anton Hanson, violin
Jules Dussap, violin
Gabrielle Lafait, viola
Simon Dechambre, cello
The Hanson Quartet was founded in 2013 in Paris. Since then, the four musicians have never stopped exploring the richness of the string quartet’s repertoire and the strength of this formation, which offers essential and inexhaustible possibilities of musical and human research. They are recording their first album for the Aparté label in 2019, a double disc devoted to Joseph Haydn. This composer, who represents the anchor of the quartet repertoire, has been with the Hansons since the beginning, and the inventiveness of his music is a constantly renewed playground for them. This double album in the form of an eclectic portrait of Haydn highlights his modernity and the diversity of his quartets; this first disc was awarded a Diapason d’Or, a Choc de Classica, a Qobuzissime and a Choix de France Musique, and was highly praised by the international press (The Strad, Ongaku Geijutsu, The Classic Review…) as was their second disc released in 2008. ) as well as their second disc, “Not all cats are grey”, released on 29 October 2021, devoted to Dutilleux, Ligeti and Bartok on the same label. (5 Diapasons, 5 stars in Classica etc….)
The Hanson Quartet has created its identity by exploring different horizons, working notably with Austrian masters such as Hatto Beyerle and Johannes Meissl, but also strongly inspired by the French school with the Ebène and Ysaye Quartets …. The Hanson Quartet is also passionate about composers of its time such as Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, and Mathias Pintscher, whose Figura IV they performed in its French premiere at the IRCAM Festival. They will record live George Crumb’s striking piece “Black Angels” for amplified quartet in August 2020 at the Deauville Festival. They also like to provoke anachronistic encounters between composers from different eras and like to propose programmes where these contrasts illuminate the works in a new and unexpected way. The Hanson Quartet has won numerous international prizes, notably at the Geneva and J. Haydn Competitions in Vienna and Lyon. It is supported by the Singer-Polignac Foundation where the musicians are in residence, by the Fondation Corde Sensible (Fondation de France) and they are laureates of the Fondation Banque Populaire. They pursue an international career, performing at the Louvre Auditorium, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the ORF Kulturhaus in Vienna, and play regularly in Asia. The enrichment that comes from meeting other artists is essential for them; they regularly share the stage with musicians such as Bertrand Chamayou, Edgar Moreau, Adam Laloum, Pierre Genisson, Bruno Philippe, Vadim Kholodenko, or Guillaume Bellom.
