VC Artist Calidore String Quartet Wins 2024 BBC Music Magazine Award

The string quartet has won the award’s chamber music category as one of three shortlisted recordings

Now in its 19th edition, the BBC Music Magazine Awards celebrates the best recordings in classical music released over the past year as voted by the public. This year, 27 recordings were shortlisted across nine categories, and presented in association with Bang & Olufsen.

VC Artist Calidore String Quartet won the award’s chamber music category with their 2023 album, “Beethoven: The Late Quartets,” released on Signum Classics as a three-disc set covering Quartets Nos. 12–16, including the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133.

Formed while its members were all studying at The Colburn School, the Calidore String Quartet comprises violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi. Their albums also include Resilience (2018) and BABEL (2020).

The group was presented with the award in a ceremony at London’s Kings Place, where they also performed works from their latest album at the event.  

“The Calidore players penetrate right to the heart of the music, giving warm and intensely lyrical accounts,” wrote the BBC Magazine. “This first volume of Beethoven quartets from the New York-based string quartet takes in the composer’s life-affirming late set, and it was delivered here with great precision, clarity and meticulous attention to detail.”

The other two nominees for the chamber category included Christian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, and Lars Vogt’s recording on Ondine records of Schubert’s Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2; Notturno, D897; Rondo, D895; and Arpeggione Sonata, D821; plus the Phantasm viol consort’s “J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Consort III” reimagined by Laurence Dreyfus, released on Linn Records. 

Calidore’s upcoming season includes performing the complete Beethoven cycle with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center throughout the year, beginning on October 22, 2024, plus at the University of Delaware, where they were recently appointed full-time as the Distinguished String Quartet in Residence.

The group’s next recording will feature Beethoven’s Middle Quartets, which will also be released as a three-disc set on Signum Classics in September 2024. 

“We are so grateful to all of you who voted to recognize our album of the Late Beethoven String Quartets with such an honor,” wrote the Calidore String Quartet. “In the fourteen years we’ve been working, growing, listening and collaborating with one another, we continually find ourselves drawn to Beethoven’s music for the enduring relevance of his humanistic perspective. We are overjoyed to be able to share these performances and recordings with you.”

Of the nine winners, selected by a jury of BBC Music Magazine critics, the coveted “Recording of the Year” went to conductor John Wilson, for his and the Sinfonia of London’s album of works for string orchestra by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius and Elgar on Chandos Records. 

This year’s Concerto Award went to the captivating album of Nielsen concertos performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Fabio Luisi, and soloists Ulla Miilman (flute), Johnny Teyssier (clarinet) and Bomsori Kim (violin).

The full list of 2024 winners can be found here.