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Chiaroscuro Quartet: gut instinct

2026-04-17T06:20:00

Chiaroscuro Quartet4 (c) Hugo Glendinning - Wigmore Hall

The musicians of the Chiaroscuro Quartet talk to Pauline Harding about the challenges of playing on gut strings, and the emotionally and physically demanding experience of recording the complete Beethoven string quartets

There is something elemental about the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s performance at Wigmore Hall on 16 February 2026. The sound whispers, burns, reshapes and flows, like wind, fire, earth and water. The players – violinists Alina Ibragimova and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, violist Emilie Hörnlund and cellist Claire Thirion – begin plaintively with Fantasia chromatica, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s 17th-century keyboard piece transcribed for string quartet by Sasha Parker, one of Ibragimova’s students. On gut strings, with historical bows and no vibrato, the effect is both mellow and sad. But as the music builds, they draw an incredible emotional power from their instruments…

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