As an elite string player, whose Amar Quartet was one of Europe’s most exploratory chamber groups, Hindemith was perfectly placed to write his powerful sequence of string quartets.

One of the greatest quartets of its time, the technically sophisticated No.5, Op.32 reveals Hindemith as a master of the medium. Twenty years were to pass before No.6 in E flat, written in America, which reveals similar qualities of control, whilst No.7 in E flat was written for himself to play in a domestic setting with female students from Yale University and his wife, an amateur cellist. It concludes one of the twentieth century’s greatest cycles of quartets.

Named after its principal violinist Licco Amar, Paul Hindemith founded a quartet in 1922. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1995, the Hindemith Institute awarded the Zürich-based ensemble the historic name of the Amar Quartet, the members of which are Anna Brunner and Igor Keller (violins), Hannes Bärtschi (viola), and Péter Somodari (cello).