The Heath Quartet

The Heath Quartet formed in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music. There were selected for representation by YCAT, awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Special Ensemble Scholarship and in 2012 won the Ensemble Prize at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where they are now regular visitors. In 2016 they won the Gramophone Chamber Award for their recording of the complete string quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, and in May 2013 became the first ensemble in fifteen years to win the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artists Award.

Their award-winning release of the Tippett was followed by two discs recorded for the Harmonia Mundi/PIAS label featuring Tchaikovsky’s first and third quartets (November 2016) and the complete Bartók quartets (June 2017), the latter of which won the 2017 Limelight Chamber Music Award and was nominated for the 2018 Gramophone Chamber Music Award – both projects were part-funded by the Quartet’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Special Ensemble Scholarship 2011. Their most recent release on Signum Records with Carolyn Sampson features works by Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

The 2022/23 season sees the quartet embark on a tour to the US with music of Ravel, Britten, Haydn, Fanny Mendelssohn and Schubert. They continue their longstanding relationship with Mecklenberg Vorpommern summer festival and the Wigmore Hall, opening their Coffee Concert season. Other highlights include recitals with the Manchester Chamber and Bollington concert societies, Brighton Dome Coffee Concerts, St George’s Bristol and Britten Pears Arts.

Recent highlights include the completion of two season residency at the Boulez Saal Berlin, their Barcelona debut in Palau de la Musica Catalana with soprano Carolyn Sampson, a Beethoven series at Bath Festival, debuts at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Saffron Hall and Cheltenham Festival, as well as returns to Handelsbeurs Ghent, Aldeburgh and Norfolk & Norwich festivals.