Klenke Quartett

The Klenke-Quartett is one of Germany's top chamber ensembles, with a membership that has remained stable since the group's formation in the early 1990s. The quartet parlayed major competition wins into an international career that has included appearances in the U.S. as well as around Europe. The Klenke-Quartett (the English equivalent, Klenke Quartet, and the form Klenke Quartett have also been used) was formed in Weimar, Germany, in 1991, when all of the members were students at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt. Since then, the quartet's membership has remained unchanged, including violinists Annegret Klenke and Beate Hartmann, violist Yvonne Uhlemann, and cellist Ruth Kaltenhäuser. The quartet made its debut in 1994 and attracted the attention of various mentors, including as Norbert Brainin of the Amadeus Quartet, Ulrich Beetz of the Abegg Trio, and Harald Schoneweg of the Cherubini Quartet. The Klenke-Quartett won several competitions in the 1990s and became prominent on the German festival scene, appearing at MDR Musiksommer, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the Harzburger Musiktage, among other events. In 2003, the quartet accompanied German president Johannes Rau on his visit to South America. The Klenke-Quartett has toured globally, appearing most recently in Iran, Japan, and the Netherlands in 2018. Back home in Germany, the group was heard frequently on the SWR (Southwest German) radio network and established two concert series of its own, the chamber music series AUFTAKT (founded 2004), which often features collaborations between the quartet and other musicians, and the Humboldt Soirees, a concert series held the Heilig-Geist-Kapelle at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. The Klenke-Quartett has been a leader in creating programming for children and families, and one of its programs in this vein is the children's musical theater piece Die kleine Hexe ("The Little Witch"), which was performed in several cities around Germany and beyond. The Klenke-Quartett has recorded more than a dozen albums for various German labels, most often Profil, which issued its complete cycle of Mozart string quartets singly and in a box set. The group moved to the Accentus label in 2018 for a recording of Mozart's string quintets, and on that label, it issued a recording of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, Horn Quintet, K. 407, and arrangements of Bach fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, in 2021.
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