Louise Tchalik - violin   Gabriel Tchalik - violin   Sarah Tchalik - viola   Marc Tchalik - cello

                      “But the real revelation of the festival is brought by the Quatuor Tchalik, inspiring by their sound homogeneity, line control, humility and honesty towards the music.” | Diapason

 

The Paris-based Quatuor Tchalik is notable not least because its members are four siblings. Raised in a Russian-French family in which music played a central role, they have been making music together since their earliest childhood. This early and intimate contact with chamber music has allowed the four young musicians to develop their own, entirely natural approach to expressive and versatile quartet playing, creating an extraordinary artistic connection between them.

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These qualities became obvious during the first international competition the ensemble participated in: at the 2018 International Mozart Competition in Salzburg, the Quatuor Tchalik caused a sensation, taking both the first prize and the special prize for the best interpretation of a Mozart string quartet.

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The quartet has also received numerous awards from renowned foundations and institutions, such as the Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena, and as part of the Tremplin de la Philharmonie de Paris. The ensemble also enjoys the support of the Fondation Safran pour la musique and was named a permanent member of the talent incubator ProQuartet in Paris in 2017. In 2019 it became a fellow of the Academy of the festival Heidelberger Frühling.

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Concerts have regularly taken the Quatuor Tchalik all over Europe, where it performs at the great musical centres of Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, and also to Asia, where it made its successful debut in China in 2019. In its French homeland, it is a regular and welcome guest at the Philharmonie in Paris, also making a much-acclaimed debut at the renowned Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 2021. Furthermore, the siblings regularly appear as a quintet, in which their brother, pianist Dania Tchalik, joins them.

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Highlights of the 2022/23 season include concerts at Dresden’s and Cologne’s Philharmonie halls and Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Elysées as well as numerous festivals, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and the well-known string quartet festival in the Pays de Fayence.

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Past festival invitations have taken the musicians to acclaimed appearances in France and abroad, such as at the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Midis Minimes in Brussels, the Heidelberger Frühling, the Flâneries Musicales de Reims, the Mozartfest in Würzburg and the String Quartet Biennial at the Philharmonie de Paris. Furthermore, the quartet is heard regularly on European radio stations, including France Musique, Radio Classique, Musiq’3 (RTBF), SWR2, Espace 2 (RTS) and BBC 3.

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The Quatuor Tchalik laid the foundation of its success in 2016, when it was accepted at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia in Madrid in the class of Günter Pichler, a founding member of the Alban Berg Quartet. The ensemble received further important impulses from such renowned chamber musicians as Jan Talich and Vladimír Bukač (Quatuor Talich), Yovan Markovitch (Quatuor Danel), Luc-Marie Aguerra (Quatuor Ysaÿe), Heime Müller (Artemis Quartet), Johannes Meissl (Artis Quartet) and Krzysztof Chorzelski (Belcea Quartet). It is not least due to these valuable experiences, which also reflect the great diversity of European music traditions, that the Tchalik siblings were able to develop the broad range of classical and romantic repertoire which distinguishes them today.

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In addition, the quartet is also enthusiastic about contemporary repertoire and champions the commissioning and premiering of new compositions. The ensemble has given world premieres by composers such as Jacques Boisgallais, Michèle Reverdy and Bastien David. On its first album, entitled Short Stories and released in 2019, immediately winning the Choc de Classica award, it performs chamber music works by Thierry Escaich, with whom the siblings have been working closely for many years. In 2020 the Quatuor Tchalik gave the world premiere of Pierre Farago’s Quale stormo d’augei notturno at the Philharmonie de Paris. The ensemble’s second CD was dedicated to chamber music by Reynaldo Hahn, winning an ffff award from Télérama. A third CD featuring the quartets of Camille Saint-Saëns was released in September 2021, earning numerous enthusiastic reviews and another Choc de Classica award.

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The entire Quatuor Tchalik plays instruments and bows crafted especially for them by luthier Philippe Mitéran and bowmaker Konstantin Cheptitski; these further underline the extraordinary chemistry within the ensemble.