The members of the Skálholt String Quartet have been since many years part of a group of musicians who participate in the concerts of the summer festival at the cathedral of Skálholt in southwest Iceland. The quartet focuses on historical performance practice of the music of the Classical and early Romantic era.
Their career as a string quartet started in 1996 when the members were asked to form a quartet to perform the Seven last words of Christ on the cross in Skálholt, Iceland and a year later in France (abbaye de la Prée, Bourges). Since then the Skálholt quartet has been invited to play in the Haydn festival which takes place every year in the magnificent Esterhaza palace in Western Hungary. On that occasion they also performed Haydn’s Seven last words of Christ on the cross in the nearby church where Haydn had been organist. A concert in Ljubljana, Slovenia, concluded this trip to central Europe. Their repertoire in the mean time has steadily widened and the quartet’s first disc, containing the Seven Words of Christ on the Cross was recorded in the church at Skálholt. A second disc with quartets by both the Haydn brothers and Boccherini awaits publication in the near future. In 2006 the group presented its first concert in Amsterdam. Since then the musicians have returned to Holland for a series of concerts, as well as to France, Italy and Spain. The present main project of the Skálholt String Quartet is to record Schubert’s string chamber music for the Musica Omnia label in USA. Last year they recorded the string quintet with two ‘cellos joined by Bruno Cocset on ‘cello and this year they will continue with the big G major quartet op. 161, and an earlier one in g minor.
The musicians of the Skálholt Quartett are Jaap Schröder and Rut Ingólfsdóttir violins, Svava Bernharðsdóttir viola and Sigurður Halldórsson ‘cello.