“Revelation of the year” De Morgen, 19 April 2005

After several years of playing chamber music together in different combinations, including as a string quartet since the summer of 2002, Antje Weithaas, Daniel Sepec, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras founded the Arcanto Quartet. Consisting of four renowned instrumentalists who have previously been better known as soloists, this new quartet has already attracted a great deal of attention in the classical music world. In addition to their love of music and their mutual friendship, the members of the Arcanto Quartet share the desire to dedicate themselves to the great enjoyment and the high demands of string quartet playing.

The Arcanto Quartet's debut concert took place highly successfully in Stuttgart in June 2004. In the following seasons, the Quartet made its debuts at the Beethovenhaus Bonn, Vredenburg Utrecht, Théâtre du Châtelet Paris, Conservatoire Royal Brussels, Ludwigsburger Schloßfestspiele and Leif Ove Andsnes' Chamber Music Festival in Risør, London's Wigmore Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and in Milan. Highlights of season 06/07 include the Arcanto Quartet's debuts at the Philharmonie Cologne, Konzerthaus Vienna, Megaron Athens and Auditorio Nacional de Musica Madrid. In November 2006, the Arcanto Quartet will embark on its first tour of Japan.

One can hardly imagine a better advocate of music than Antje Weithaas. Music and the communication with her fellow musicians and the audience are always the main focus. Today, she is one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of her generation. Her wide range of repertoire includes the great concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann and modern classics by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ligeti and Gubaidulina, but also rarities such as the violin concertos by Korngold, Hartmann and Schoeck. Antje Weithaas has been invited by leading German orchestras like Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberger Symphoniker and the major German radio orchestras as well as numerous major international orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony and the leading orchestras of the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Asia. She has worked with renowned conductors like Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Neville Marriner, Sakari Oramo, Thomas Dausgaard, Andrej Boreyko and Christian Zacharias. Antje Weithaas is particularly active in the chamber music field with musical partners such as Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff and Sharon Kam. She became a professor at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in 2004.

Daniel Sepec studied with Dieter Vorholz in Frankfurt as well as Gerhard Schulz in Vienna and took part in master classes with Sandor Végh and the Alban Berg Quartet. Since 1993, Daniel Sepec has been leading Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, regularly appearing as a soloist under conductors like Daniel Harding, Thomas Hengelbrock, Frans Brüggen and Trevor Pinnock. Attracted to the richness of expression in Baroque music, Daniel Sepec has increasingly become fascinated by the Baroque violin. He regularly leads the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble, an original instruments ensemble, under the baton of Thomas Hengelbrock. As guest leader, he has performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Camerata Bern and Camerata Academica Salzburg, as soloist with the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood and the Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck. He played Biber's Rosenkranz Sonatas on Baroque violin at the Vienna Konzerthaus and at the Innsbruck Festwochen der Alten Musik. As a chamber musician, he is regularly invited to the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg.

Tabea Zimmermann studied with Ulrich Koch at the Freiburg Musikhochschule and with Sándor Végh at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Between 1982 and 1984, she won the competitions of Geneva, Budapest and Paris. As a viola soloist, she regularly works with the most distinguished orchestras, from Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony to Israel Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris. She has recorded the most important viola repertoire to great acclaim. Performing contemporary music is a major aspect of her artistic activities, and works which she has recently premiered include Ligeti's Sonata for Viola solo, which was dedicated to her, as well as the viola concertos by Sally Beamish, Wolfgang Rihm and Heinz Holliger. Tabea Zimmermann is much in demand as a chamber musician and has worked with such well-known partners as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Hartmut Höll, Christian Tetzlaff and the Alban Berg Quartet. Following professorships in Saarbrücken and Frankfurt/Main, she has been teaching at the Hochschule für Musik „Hanns Eisler“ in Berlin since 2002. Tabea Zimmermann is married to the conductor Steven Sloane and has three children.

Jean-Guihen Queyrasstudied cello in Lyon, Freiburg and at the Juilliard School in New York. He was solo cellist of Ensemble InterContemporain Paris with whom he recorded György Ligeti's cello concerto for Deutsche Grammophon. As a sought-after chamber musician and soloist, he has played in such prestigious concert halls as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall London, Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels, Suntory Hall Tokyo and Carnegie Hall New York. Jean-Guihen Queyras has appeared with such major orchestras as Orchestra della RAI Torino, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Orchestre de Paris. His chamber music partners include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Lars Vogt, Emmanuel Pahud and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. In November 2002, Jean-Guihen Queyras was awarded the City of Toronto-Glenn Gould International Protegé Prize in Music and Communication by Pierre Boulez and the Glenn Gould Foundation Toronto. Since 2001, Jean-Guihen Queyras has been professor at the Musikhochschule Trossingen.

March 2006