Gringolts Quartet
leads his quartet with impressive selflessness, deploying his ardent but tightly focused violin tone to set the outer boundaries of the ensemble sound ... The viola player Silvia Simionescu, in particular, sounded like a kindred spirit to Gringolts, with a burnt umber tone that resembled Jonas Kaufmann’s lower register. But the Gringolts Quartet’s rhythmic drive, its translucency and its cinematic shifts from one dynamic level to another were a collective achievement; and they felt instinctive ... a performance that lays bare the full, sublime vastness of Dvorak’s imagination. The Spectator, 2021

The Zurich-based Gringolts Quartet was born from mutual friendships and chamber music partnerships that cross four countries: over the years, the Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts, the Romanian violist Silvia Simionescu, and the Armenian violinist Anahit Kurtikyan frequently performed together in various chamber formations at distinguished festivals; the German cellist Claudius Herrmann played with Anahit Kurtikyan in the renowned Amati Quartet. In the Gringolts Quartet, the four musicians inspire with their radiant, fused, and at the same time finely differentiated ensemble sound.

The musical partners of the group include artists such as Leon Fleischer, Jörg Widmann, David Geringas, Malin Hartelius, Christian Poltéra, and Eduard Brunner. Aside from classical repertoire for string quartet, they are also dedicated performers of contemporary music, including string quartets by Marc-André Dalbavie, Jörg Widmann, Jens Joneleit, and Lotta Wennäkoski.

The Gringolts Quartet has attracted attention among critics and audiences with their exquisite CD recordings of works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Together with David Geringas, the Gringolts Quartet participated in the world premiere recording of Walter Braunfels’ quintet in 2012, which was awarded a "Supersonic Award" as well as an ECHO Klassik award. Their CD of quintets by Glazunov and Taneyev with Christian Poltéra was released in the spring of 2016 and was awarded the Diapason d’Or. Jointly with Meta4, a recording with the octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu was published by BIS in 2020 and awarded the Quarterly Prize of the German Record Critics. Also on BIS records, a CD with Schönberg's string quartets Nos. 2 and 4, praised by Klassik Heute as a "reference recording", was released in 2017, "triumphally confirmed" (Rondo, Eleonore Büning) from the release of the second volume with the quartets Nos. 1 and 3 in spring 2022, for which the quartet again received a Diapason d'Or.

The members of the Gringolts Quartet all play on rare Italian instruments: Ilya Gringolts plays a Giuseppe Guarneri "del Gesù" violin, Cremona 1742-43, on loan from a private collection. Anahit Kurtikyan plays a Camillo Camilli violin, Mantua 1733. Silvia Simionescu plays a Jacobus Januarius viola, Cremona 1660. Claudius Herrmann plays a Maggini cello, Brescia 1600. Prince Golizyn, who was a great admirer of Beethoven, gave the first performances of the composer’s last string quartets, which he commissioned, on this instrument

Lilli Maijala
gave her first solo performance with the Oulu Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17 and has since appeared regularly as both a soloist and a chamber musician on stages across Europe.

In recent years she has appeared with orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Camerata Salzburg, Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen and Tapiola Sinfonietta.

In 2013 she premiered the viola concerto of Lauri Kilpiö with Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

The premiere CD recording of Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s Concerto for viola, double bass and chamber orchestra with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, conductor Juha Kangas and bass player Olivier Thiery was published in January 2019 with excellent reviews.

Lilli Maijala studied the viola at the Sibelius Academy, Hochschule für Musik Detmold and the Edsberg Chamber Music Institute with teachers such as Teemu Kupiainen, Diemut Poppen and Lars Anders Tomter. A first prize winner of the viola competition Klassik Festival Ruhr, held in conjunction with music academies across Europe, Maijala has won numerous awards, including second prize at the Nordic Vola Competition and special prizes at the ARD Competition Munich and Tokyo International Viola Competition.

Maijala was a member of the critically acclaimed, fearless quartet-lab with cellist Pieter Wispelwey and violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Pekka Kuusisto. Based in Amsterdam, she’s currently dividing her time between the teaching post at the Sibelius Academy and international music festivals as West Cork, IMS Prussia Cove, Resonances, Peasmarsh, Schiermonnikoog. Alongside the Jean Baptiste Vuillaume viola, on loan by kind permission of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Lilli Maijala also performs on baroque viola.