Founded in 1997 in Israel, the Aviv Quartet (Sergey Ostrovsky and Philippe Villafranca, violins; Noémie Bialobroda, viola; Daniel Mitnitsky, cello) was awarded the Grand Prix and four special prizes at the Third Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition (1999), First Prize (Amadeus Quartet Prize) at the Charles Hennen Concours, International Chamber Music Competition for Strings (1999), the Schubert Prize at the International Chamber Music Competition ‘Franz Schubert and Modern Music’ (2003), Second Prize and the International Critics Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition (2003), and Second Prize at the Prague Spring International Music Competition (1998).

The Aviv Quartet has performed at leading venues worldwide including Carnegie Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Sydney Opera House, Cologne Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, The Louvre Auditorium, Théâtre de la ville in Paris, and Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

The Quartet recently presented the Beethoven Quartet cycle in six concerts in Geneva. Its recordings for Naxos, including works by Hoffmeister, Schulhoff and Dohnányi, have been highly acclaimed for their freshness of spirit, vivacity, and outstanding ensemble performance. Aviv, Hebrew for ‘spring’, represents the Quartet’s artistic philosophy of fresh thinking, stripping away artificial coverings to reveal true nature, sharper definition, and heightened awareness.

For more information, visit www.avivquartet.com.

Born in Rottenburg am Neckar, Franz Anton Hoffmeister went to Vienna to study law, leaving in 1778 to serve as Kapellmeister to a nobleman in Hungary. By 1784 he was back in Vienna, where he set up a music publishing business, establishing a close association with Mozart. In 1795 he signed much of his business over to Artaria. In 1800 he started another publishing enterprise with the Leipzig organist Ambrosius Kühnel, a business which later was taken over by C.F. Peters. Hoffmeister left Leipzig and returned to Vienna in 1805. He published works by many of his contemporaries.

Vocal and Instrumental Music
Hoffmeister contributed to many genres of music. For the theatre he wrote operettas, Singspiel and operas, as well as other sacred and secular vocal music. For the orchestra he composed 44 symphonies, 13 of which are lost and 15 published. He was particularly prolific in chamber music, with a quantity of string quartets and flute quartets among many other works, including trios, duo sonatas, and violin or flute sonatas, all very much in the accepted style of his time.