Mathilde Potier, violin
Pierre Liscia-Beaurenaut, violin
Jean-Baptiste Souchon-Graziani, viola
Madeleine Douçot, cello
The Metamorphoses Quartet was born of a strong desire to explore the string quartet repertoire and to share— with an ever wider audience—its rigor, richness, and sometimes its violence as well, within a single musical breath. What results is a series of metamorphoses, like those recounted by Ovid in the masterpiece to which the Quartet wished to pay homage: fleeting, perpetual, and above all plural.
Holding a Master’s degree in chamber music from the class of François Salque (Ysaÿe Quartet) at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), the Quartet had the opportunity to study for several years with Hatto Beyerle, founding member of the legendary Alban Berg Quartet, within the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA), of which the Quartet has been a nominated member since 2018. After a postgraduate cycle at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW Wien) in the class of Johannes Meissl (2022–2023), the Quartet is now in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (Belgium) under the guidance of Corina Belcea, Miguel Da Silva, and Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. In parallel, the Quartet also studies with Günter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartet) at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, as well as with the Modigliani Quartet at the École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris.
The Quartet has also benefited from the valuable advice of the Ebène Quartet at the Rencontres Musicales d’Évian; the Kronos Quartet at the String Quartet Biennale of the Philharmonie de Paris; Ori Kam (Jerusalem Quartet) at the Ravel Academy; as well as Valentin Erben (Alban Berg Quartet), Christophe Coin (Mosaïques Quartet), Eckart Runge (Artemis Quartet), Petr Prause (Talich Quartet), Alfred Brendel, Itamar Golan, and Patrick Jüdt.
Winner of the ProQuartet Prize at the FNAPEC European Competition and a scholarship holder and laureate of the Ravel Academy, the Metamorphoses Quartet is also a laureate of the Young String Quartet Platform of the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as of the Royaumont Abbey Foundation and Villefavard.
This journey has led them to perform in some of the most prestigious venues: Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Teatro Goldoni in Florence, the Prades Festival, Quatuors à Bordeaux, the Potager du Roi in Versailles (by invitation of Gérard Caussé and the Modigliani Quartet), the Cordes sur Ciel Festival, the Les Arcs Festival, the Radio Classique Festival, and during the Night of the Quartet alongside the Hermès or Zaïde Quartets, as well as with Nemanja Radulović, Pierre Génisson, Laure Favre-Kahn, François Salque, Emmanuelle Bertrand, Alexis Descharmes, and Roman Borisov, Aurélien Pontier, Ambroisine Bré, Virgile Roche, or Paul Zientara.
The Metamorphoses Quartet’s repertoire ranges from the great masters of the genre to the exploration of the most contemporary works, from Haydn to Aftab Darvishi, and seeks to highlight lesser-known pieces through innovative projects, such as the show Du coq à l’alouette, entirely written by the Quartet and premiered in 2022, or Une pièce bien à elles, devoted to works from the female musical heritage (“matrimoine”), which the Quartet is committed to performing in all kinds of venues and for all audiences.
The Metamorphoses Quartet is currently artist-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation as well as at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (Waterloo, Belgium), and is represented by the Claire Laballery Agency for France and internationally.
