Quartetto Italiano
string quartet
The Quartetto Italiano (English: Italian Quartet) was a string quartet founded in Reggio Emilia in 1945. They made their debut in 1945 in Carpi when all four players were still in their early 20s. They were originally named Nuovo Quartetto Italiano (to distinguish the ensemble from another "Quartetto Italiano", which had been founded at the beginning of the twentieth century by the violinist Remigio (Remy) Prìncipe) before dropping the "Nuovo" tag in 1951. They are particularly noted for their recording of the complete cycle of Beethoven string quartets, made between 1967 and 1975. The quartet disbanded in 1980.
The secretary and historian of the Quartet was Guido Alberto Borciani (Reggio Emilia, 20 October 1920 – 4 April 2008), brother of Paolo Borciani, the quartet's founder and player of the 1st violin part. A mechanical engineer and talented pianist, Guido Alberto founded in 1987 the Premio Paolo Borciani.
Origins and activities
Borciani, Pegreffi and Rossi met in 1940 at the Concorso Nazionale in La Spezia. In summer 1942 they met again at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where the cellist Arturo Bonucci (Sr.) (head of the chamber class, husband of Pina Carmirelli) put them together with the viola player Lionello Forzanti for the study session. They worked together on the Debussy quartet and performed it in September 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quartetto Italiano” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.