Classical, jazz and pop with the vision string quartet

It's only a stone’s throw from the summerhouse to the big stage: in one of their current music videos, the four musicians of the vision string quartet are seen enjoying themselves as they casually strum a relaxed samba against the background of a German allotment garden colony – featuring Hawaiian shirts, a swimming pool and an inflatable unicorn. At other times, they appear on the world’s stages in more elegant attire and play the great string quartet repertoire at the highest standard – always from memory and, except for the cellist, standing up.

After studying under the Artemis Quartet and Günter Pichler, leader of the Alban Berg Quartet, and winning competitions, the formation, founded in 2012, quickly moved into the international spotlight. The quartet’s vision is to broaden their stylistic horizons and to integrate arrangements from pop and jazz to their own compositions into their concert programmes. This effortless versatility is also reflected in their discography: in 2020, they released Memento, an Opus Klassik award-winning recording of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6, followed in 2021 by Spectrum, an equally impressive album of exclusively original compositions. With their sense of rhythm and their imaginative improvisations, the four musicians prove that the combination of being true to classical works and an experimental band feeling is not a hair-raising balancing act, but rather the embodiment of their musicality.

Jakob Encke recently said farewell to the vision string quartet, as he wanted to pursue a different direction in his career. His position on the first violin is now filled by Florian Willeitner, who perfectly complements the philosophy of the vision quartet with his many years of experience in classical and jazz projects.