Biography
Messages Quartet (…) is undoubtedly a new power on the Polish quartet-stage
and must be observed.
Marta Januszkiewicz, Ruch Muzyczny (12/2015)
Małgorzata Wasiucionek-Potera, Oriana Masternak – violin
Maria Shetty – viola
Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska – cello
The Messages Quartet was founded in Kraków in 2014. Only a year later they won the Second Prize, Silver Medal and a Special Award for their interpretation of Shostakovich’s Quartet at the Second International Competition of Chamber Music in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Recognized by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, in February 2016 the Messages Quartet was awarded a Young Poland Scholarship Program Grant enabling them to record the Complete String Quartets by Szymon Laks for DUX in 2017. Building on their pioneering recordings of chamber music by Philip and Xaver Scharwenka, the Messages’ Laks album received excellent reviews in the French, German, British, American and Polish press.
The Messages Quartet’s mission is to promote chamber music by lesser-known and emerging contemporary composers. Over the past several years, they have presented several world premieres of music by Polish and foreign composers. The Quartet’s current repertoire includes works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Szymon Laks, Stanisław Moniuszko, Andrzej Panufnik, Karol Szymanowski, and Mieczysław Weinberg, alongside the standard repertoire of string quartet masterpieces.
Members of the Messages Quartet graduated from Chopin Music University in Warsaw and Kraków Music Academy. They completed their postgraduate solo studies and master courses at leading European universities, including Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and Stuttgart. Besides their concert activities, members are on the faculty at the Academy of Music in Katowice and Kraków. They also regularly collaborate with the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, and Sinfonietta Cracovia.
Praised by Le Monde for the “precise and refined quality of their playing” and described by Lynn René Bayley in The Art Music Lounge as, “playing with plenty of energy … what a pleasure it is to just bask in their sound!,” the Messages Quartet has appeared across Europe and South America to universal and well-deserved acclaim. The ensemble’s latest recordings of Andrzej Panufnik’s and Stanisław Moniuszko’s quartets solidify and further amplify the Ruch Muzyczny review stating that, “Messages Quartet … is undoubtedly a new power on the Polish quartet stage and must be observed.”
