The Medici Quartet and Ensemble

Drawing on more than 35 years of world class musical performance The Medici Ensmble is a leading international group, having appeared to critical acclaim in more than thirty countries across five continents.

As well as regular radio broadcasts, they have a wide ranging and eclectic discography of more than 40 records which includes a highly regarded Beethoven Quartets Cycle, the seldom heard Saint-Saëns Quartets and Wajahat Khan's Sarod Quintet Raag Desh.

In 1996 Channel 4 Television broadcast a three-part series entitled Music & the Mind, performed by The Medici Quartet and presented by their leader Paul Robertson; these programmes combined music and science to explore the power of music in human life, cognitive and emotional development and health.

Renowned for their dramatic programmes for string quartet and actors which revealed the intimate relationship between the composer's work and his life & times through the imaginative conjunction of music and readings were nitiated by Paul Robertson, ‘The Kingdom of the Spirit’: Beethoven through his Letters by John Caird and Michael Kennedy's programme about Sir Edward and Lady Elgar at Brinkwells entitled ‘Wood Magic’ have been performed many hundreds of times. Alan Bennet with composer George Fenton also created and recorded a memorable performance piece ‘Hymn’ with them for their 30th anniversary.

Although the Medici Quartet gave its final performance at the Harrogate International Festival in 2007 the same core members have since reformed, as the Medici Ensemble, in order to explore a wider repertoire and share its unique history with young professionals and Executive Leaders.

‘The playing is full of virtuosic compulsion and energy, harnessed in the service of a grand and dignified conception of the music’ – Gramaphone

They are one of the most perfectly balanced quartets in Europe today, each strand wonderfully clear and beautifully focused…yet there is always a feeling of spontaneity - The Yorkshire Post