Now spanning four decades, the unparalleled career of the Austrian Hagen Quartet began in 1981. The early years were marked by competition successes and an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The Hagen Quartet has been an honorary member of the Vienna Konzerthaus since 2012 and received the Concertgebouw Prize in 2019.

In the 2022-2023 season, the Hagen Quartet will perform string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, continuing its intensive engagement with both composers of the past two seasons.

The Hagen Quartet will perform the Mozart cycles that could not be held in the last two years at the Vienna Konzerthaus and London’s Wigmore Hall. In addition to Mozart and Shostakovich, Schubert’s string quintet with Julia Hagen and Gautier Capuçon also features in some of the programmes. The 2022-2023 tours will take the Hagen Quartet to Siena, Florence, Hamburg, and Dortmund, to name just a few venues. They will also perform again in Salzburg and at the Schubertiades in Schwarzenberg and Hohenems.

The quartet’s repertoire consists of cleverly combined programmes that span their entire history, from Haydn to Kurtág, also delving deeper into composers of their generation. Collaborations with artists such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt (†) and György Kurtág are as important to the Hagen Quartet as joint concert performances with Maurizio Pollini and Mitsuko Uchida, among many others.

For scores of young string quartets, the Hagen Quartet is a role model in terms of sound quality, stylistic diversity, interaction and serious engagement with the works and composers of their genre. As teachers and mentors at the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Hochschule Basel and in international masterclasses, they pass on this wealth of experience to their younger colleagues.

The Hagen Quartet plays on old Italian master instruments.