Schedule for Copelman-quartet (Great Britain) 2022

Mikhail Kopelman violin
Boris Kuschnir violin
Igor Sulyga viola
Mikhail Milman cello

Founded by experienced chamber musicians steeped in the standards and style of the classic Russian school, the Kopelman Quartet carries forward a rich inheritance of technical excellence, lyricism, grace and musical integrity.

Mikhail Kopelman, Boris Kuschnir, Igor Sulyga and Mikhail Milman all graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire in the 1970’s, this institution’s golden age, when the students regularly worked with musicians and teachers such as David Oistrakh, Boris Belenky, Yuri Yankelevich, Fyodor Druzhinin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich and Natalia Gutman. These strong musical influences have remained with the members of the Kopelman Quartet, even though they pursued individual careers for twenty-five years before founding the quartet in 2002. Mikhail Kopelman, first violin, was the renowned leader of the Borodin Quartet for twenty years, and was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award and the Concertgebouw Silver Medal of Honour. Boris Kuschnir, second violin, is a distinguished teacher whose pupils include Julian Rachlin and Nikolai Znaider. Igor Sulyga, viola, played for twenty years with Vladimir Spivakov, in the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra and in his string quartet. As founding members of the Moscow String Quartet, both Boris Kuschnir and Igor Sulyga worked with Dmitri Shostakovich on his late quartets. Mikhail Milman, cello, was for twenty years principal cellist of the Moscow Virtuosi and collaborated frequently with the Borodin Quartet in concerts and recordings.

The common roots and background of the musicians enabled the Kopelman Quartet quickly to grow to maturity, and their diary soon included engagements at venues such as the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall, London and the Musikverein, Vienna. Their Edinburgh Festival concert received extraordinary reviews, referring to "every hallmark of distinguished musicianship" and "great humanity in the finesse of their playing".

The Kopelman Quartet has given concerts in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Slovakia, Cyprus, the United States and Canada. Festivals in which they have played include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Valladolid Festival, the Zurich Festival and the Ravinia Festival in the United States. Future engagements include their return to the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall and the National Auditorium, Madrid, as well as further concerts in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada and the United States of America.

Two recordings are planned for release in 2006: the first, for Nimbus Records, is of Prokofiev and Shostakovich; the second, of Tchaikovsky and Schubert, will be on the new Wigmore Live label.