Chamber music
Auner Quartett
“It had to be, once again, a truly Viennese quartet that engages with the music of this city from the early twentieth century with the necessary quality and enthusiasm …”
Günter Pichler, Alban Berg Quartet
Auner Quartett
Named after the great-great-aunt of the first violinist, the Viennese violinist and composer Mary Dickenson-Auner, and founded in 2013, the Auner Quartett has established itself as one of the most distinctive ensembles of its generation on the international chamber music scene.
The ensemble won the renowned Eugène Ysaÿe Competition in Liège, among others. It was the first Austrian ensemble to appear on the cover of the Performing Arts Yearbook of Europe, under the headline “Auner Quartett — The award-winning string quartet: a perfect musical match”. In the 2020/21 season a panel of the Austrian Foreign Ministry appointed it Cultural Ambassador of Austria within the New Austrian Sound of Music programme; since then it has performed regularly at Austrian cultural forums and embassies around the world.
Critics repeatedly single out the ensemble’s stylistic assurance and expressive power; for all four musicians chamber music is “the essence of the musical” (Austrian radio Ö1).
Cycle at the Vienna Hofburg
Inspired by the historical Viennese salon culture, the four musicians founded their own chamber music cycle in 2021 in collaboration with the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle at the Hofburg. In this series — realised together with Radio Klassik — Daniel Auner guides the audience through the programme in person. The works are not merely presented but opened up with background and anecdote.
The quartet explores neglected jewels of the repertoire and, in the Viennese Classics in particular, cultivates a nuanced, rhetorically shaped sound. A further focus lies on music by women composers such as Mary Auner and her circle around Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Béla Bartók, Max Bruch and Paul Hindemith, as well as on new music, often commissioned by the quartet itself.
Studies
The Auner Quartett studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, among others with Johannes Meissl (Artis Quartett), and is a selected ensemble of the European Chamber Music Academy, through which it developed its repertoire at several European conservatoires. Further impulses came in masterclasses with Hatto Beyerle and Günter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartet), Petr Prause (Talich Quartet), Alasdair Tait (Belcea Quartet), Patrick Jüdt and members of the St Lawrence String Quartet.
The members come from Austria, Romania, Brazil and Belarus — different cultural roots united in a shared musical language of Viennese character.
Concert activity
The quartet appears regularly in the major halls of its home city — the Brahms Hall of the Wiener Musikverein, the Mozart Hall of the Konzerthaus, the Arnold Schönberg Center, the Baroque Hall of Vienna City Hall and the Ehrbar-Saal. Tours have taken the musicians to the Allegro Vivo Festival, the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Schubertiade Sion, the Ravenna Festival and the Festival Internazionale di Quartetto in Fiesole. Further appearances — from Berlin to Brazil, from Kuwait to Colombia — underline its worldwide activity.
Education and responsibility
As committed music educators the quartet seeks contact with the younger generation. Within Rhapsody in School, the initiative founded by Lars Vogt, it appears regularly in schools. Through benefit concerts — for Pharmacists Without Borders or Diakonie refugee aid, among others — and workshops for youth orchestras abroad, the ensemble takes on social responsibility. Such projects, partly in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, have taken the musicians to Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Belize and South Africa.
Recordings
The disc of clarinet quintets by Mozart, Reger and Leitner (Gramola 2018, with Simon Reitmaier) was highly praised; the portrait album of the Austrian composer Johanna Doderer (Capriccio 2019) documented the quartet’s range. Versinkende Sonne followed in 2021: recorded on commission from the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, this account of string quartets by Egon Wellesz, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Anton Webern was named CD of the Year 2022 by Ö1. A new disc, Jenseits vom tanzenden Wien, appears in 2026 with quartets by Schoenberg, Kreisler, Korngold and Strauss.
The Auner Quartett has been supported since its founding by the Viennese string manufacturer Thomastik-Infeld, and since 2025 by the tailoring house Habsburg.
Own editions
Three arrangements for string quartet have been published by Universal Edition Vienna: Josef Strauß’s polka mazur Brennende Liebe Op. 129 and the waltzes Frühlingsstimmen Op. 410 and An der schönen blauen Donau Op. 314 by Johann Strauß. They were made for the quartet’s concerts and tested there.
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