The Molinari Quartet is very proud to have received four nominations as finalist for the Opus Prizes 2024-25. The two most recent Molinari Quartet CD’s, the complete string quartets by Luciano Berio and the complete string quartets by Giacinto Scelsi were each selected as finalists in the category Album of the year – Modern, contemporary music. Two of the four concerts in the Twentieth and Beyond series have also been nominated as finalists. The Winners’ of the 9th International Composition Competition Concert which was held on September 27 2024 and the December 14 2024 concert entitled Nocturnes are finalists in the category Concert of the year – Modern, contemporary music. The Opus Prize Gala will take place on February 8th 2026 at Bourgie Hall. The ceremony has become Quebec’s annual gathering of the artists and artisans of the musical industry. You can purchase tickets for the event by following this link. The gala will also be live streamed on the Facebook page of the Conseil québécois de la musique.  

The Molinari Quartet’s 2025–26 autumn season marks both a new beginning and the continuation of its major projects. The QM musicians enthusiastically welcome a new member, violist Cynthia Blanchon, whose extensive experience as a chamber musician will be an asset to the ensemble. The Molinari’s 29th season will be filled with masterpieces for string quartet, including the presentation of Shostakovich’s complete quartet cycle, which could not be held last May and is rescheduled for May 2026. The first concert of the season will take place on Tuesday, 7 October at 7:30 p.m. at the Conservatoire de Montréal. Entitled ‘Passages,’ this concert will feature two great masters of the 20th-century string quartet, Dmitri Shostakovich and Béla Bartók, as well as French composer André Boucourechliev. On Friday, 5 December at 7:30 p.m., the second concert of the season, ‘Canadian Rhythms’, will feature three Canadian works with lively rhythms. You will hear Dark Energy by composer Kelly-Marie Murphy, R. Murray Schafer’s 4th Quartet, and the premiere of Blair Thomson’s Internesses. As usual, the two autumn concerts will be preceded by informative Dialogues sur le Plateau at the Maison de la culture Plateau Mont-Royal, 465 Mont-Royal Avenue East. These activities allow the public to familiarise themselves with the works on the programme of the Vingtième et plus series of concerts held at the Conservatoire. The Dialogues will take place on 21 September at 2 p.m. and 2 December at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free. The Molinari Quartet continues its collaboration with the Guido Molinari Foundation with the presentation of the Music to See series of concerts. The fall concert will take place on Sunday, 2 November at 3 p.m., and the musicians will perform R. Murray Schafer’s Quartet No. 1, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 12, and the premiere of Denis Dion’s Coin Darling, a work in tribute to Guido Molinari. The concert will take place in the heart of the exhibition I am here by the renowned artist Irene F. Whittome. This exhibition will bring together works spanning sixty years of artistic practice. Tickets are sold at the door for $20. The Guido Molinari Foundation is located at 3290 Sainte-Catherine Street East in Montreal. Full details of all the concerts are available in the Calendar section of the website.

The Molinari Quartet is thrilled to announce the arrival of violist Cynthia Blanchon to the ensemble for the start of the Molinari’s 29th season. A renowned chamber musician, Ms. Blanchon has been invited to numerous festivals such as the Colorado Music Festival, the Rencontres musicales de Haute-Provence and the Festival Entre Vents et Marais (France), Orford Musique, the Festival de Lanaudière, Music & Beyond, the Festival Classica, the ProMusica series, the Concerts aux Îles du Bic, and the Rencontres musicales de Laterrière. She has performed alongside renowned artists such as the Talich Quartet, Scott St. John, Martin Chalifour and Rainer Küchl, among others. Selected to participate in the prestigious Prussia Cove Festival and the McGill International String Quartet Academy (MISQA), she also took part in the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition as a member of the Myriade Quartet. Cynthia Blanchon, who holds a doctorate degree from the University of Montreal, is currently a guest professor of viola and co-director of the string department at that same University. Cynthia has been invited as principal viola with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Welsh National Opera and the Thirteen Strings ensemble. As a member of the London Symphony Orchestra, she has performed under the baton of renowned conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Vassily Petrenko, and has performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Suntory Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Musikverein, Elbphilharmonie, Sydney Opera House and Philharmonie de Paris. ‘I am very happy to be joining the Molinari Quartet, such an iconic ensemble in Quebec and beyond… thank you for the trust you have placed in me, I am very much looking forward to starting the next season!’ Cynthia Blanchon Welcome to the Molinari Quartet Cynthia!

Our brand-new CD of Luciano Berio’s complete string quartets is hot off the press! It has been available since Friday March 14 in stores and on all online listening platforms. Follow this link for online listening or purchase. We’re very proud of this disc, which is the first complete set of quartets by Luciano Berio, the famous Arditti Quartet having never recorded Study, Berio’s first quartet. The 5 quartets follow the composer’s unique career path, with an early work for quartet entitled Study, written in 1952 and of a rather classical style. This was followed a few years later by Quartetto per archi, a work that belongs to post-Webernian music and generalized serialism. In 1964, Berio delivered Sincronie, a work in which gesture guides the music. The four instruments sometimes play synchronously, sometimes as if the music were random. Thirty years separate Sincronie from Notturno, Berio’s undisputed masterpiece. Murmurs, echoes, explosions of sound, this work is profoundly expressive and represents a pinnacle of 20th-century quartet writing. Berio concluded his quartet career with Glosse in 1997, a work written for the Borciani String Quartet Competition. Berio describes the work as “short comments on a virtual quartet or, more precisely, on a quartet that doesn’t exist – a rather complex and mysterious affair”.