Escher String Quartet & Alessio Bax, piano

Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its hometown of New York, the ensemble serves as season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

Highlights of the 2024-2025 season find Escher String Quartet performing in many of the great venues and organizations in the United States, including Alice Tully Hall, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Shriver Hall Concert Series, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, University Musical Society at University of Michigan, Spivey Hall, and Chamber Music Houston, among others. In addition to their North American engagements, the quartet returns once again to Wigmore Hall for a BBC live broadcast recital as well as other engagements in Germany and continental Europe. 

Escher String Quartet has made a distinctive impression throughout Europe, with recent debuts including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Kings Place, and Auditorium du Louvre. The group has appeared at festivals such as the Heidelberg Spring Festival, Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy, the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, and more. Alongside its growing European profile, the Escher quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at the Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Bowdoin Music Festival, Toronto Summer Music, and Ravinia. 

Escher String Quartet achieved critical success last season in their performances of the entire cycle of string quartets by Bela Bartok in single concert format, both at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Recently, the Escher quartet has had successful releases of multiple albums, including string quartets by Pierre Jalbert and the Escher’s studio recording of the complete Janacek quartets and Pavel Haas quartet no. 2 with multi-award-winning percussionist Colin Currie (BIS Label). Recordings of the complete Mendelssohn quartets and beloved romantic quartets of Dvorak, Borodi,n and Tchaikovsky were released on the BIS label in 2015-18 and received with the highest critical acclaim. 

In 2019, DANCE, an album of quintets with Grammy award winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, was enthusiastically received, and in 2021, the Escher’s recording of the complete quartets of Charles Ives and Samuel Barber was met with equal excitement. The quartet has also recorded the complete Zemlinsky String Quartets in two volumes, released on the Naxos label in 2013 and 2014. 

Escher String Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole. 

For more information about Escher String Quartet, please visit their website.

Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the 2000 Leeds International Piano Competition and the 1997 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition and is now a familiar face on five continents as a recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist. He has appeared with over 150 orchestras, including the New York, London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Sydney, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, and the Tokyo and NHK Symphony in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Hannu Lintu, Fabio Luisi, Sir Simon Rattle, Ruth Reinhardt, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden. 

As a renowned chamber musician, he recently collaborated with Lisa Batiashvili, Joshua Bell, Ian Bostridge, Lucille Chung, James Ehnes, Vilde Frang, Steven Isserlis, Daishin Kashimoto, François Leleux, Sergei Nakariakov, Emmanuel Pahud, Lawrence Power, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Paul Watkins, and Tabea Zimmermann, among many others. 

Since 2017, he has been the Artistic Director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, a summer music festival in the Val d’Orcia region of Tuscany. He appears regularly in festivals such as Seattle, Bravo Vail, Salon-de-Provence, Le Pont in Japan, Great Lakes, Verbier, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Aspen and Tanglewood. 

In 2009, he was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and four years later he received both the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. 

Bax’s most recent album releases are Forgotten Dances and Debussy & Ravel for Two with Lucille Chung. His celebrated Signum Classics discography also includes Italian Inspirations; Beethoven’s Hammerklavier and Moonlight Sonatas (a Gramophone Editor’s Choice); Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; Bax & Chung, a duo disc with Lucille Chung; Alessio Bax plays Mozart, recorded with London’s Southbank Sinfonia; Alessio Bax: Scriabin & Mussorgsky (named “Recording of the Month … and quite possibly … of the year” by MusicWeb International); Alessio Bax plays Brahms (a Gramophone Critics’ Choice); Bach Transcribed; and Rachmaninov: Preludes & Melodies (an American Record Guide Critics’ Choice). Recorded for Warner Classics, his Baroque Reflections album was also a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. He performed Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata for Daniel Barenboim in the PBS-TV documentary Barenboim on Beethoven: Masterclass, available on DVD from EMI.  

At the age of 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, and after further studies in Europe, he moved to the United States in 1994. He has been on the piano faculty of Boston’s New England Conservatory since the fall of 2019 and serves as co-artistic director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation for emerging pianists. 

Bax lives in New York City with pianist Lucille Chung and their daughter, Mila. 

For more information about Alessio Bax, please visit his website.