The Tostino Quartet is the winner of this year's String Quartet Lab at the Karlsruhe University of Music. With their presentation of the 4th movement from Joseph Haydn's String Quartet op. 74 No. 3 and the String Quartet No. 8 op. 110 by Dmitri D. Shostakovich, the four young musicians convinced the audience. Gregory Ciesla, Jay Wan, Hansol Lee and Konstantin Pointner had solved the task – namely not only to play, but also to present what they had learned in the laboratory – most convincingly from the point of view of the concert visitors. The Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Karlsruhe is the donor of the audience prize, which is endowed with € 3,000.
The concert marked the conclusion of the string quartet laboratory, in which the four musicians of the vision string quartet worked for a week with three quartets from the university. In addition to the prizewinners, these were the Alinea Quartet and the Quatuor Adrian. "For us it was very exciting days. To see how such progress became visible within a few days was also a great enrichment for us," said Leonard Disselhorst, himself a graduate of the Karlsruhe University of Music.
Prof. Nachum Erlich, head of the string instruments department at the Karlsruhe University of Music, will now work with the quartets to evaluate what the lab has brought to the students. The goal is to make the lab a permanent offering. The vision string quartet can also imagine continuing to work with the university and using the lab to show young musicians of string chamber music new ways of making music and presenting themselves on stage. The String Quartet Lab was made possible by private sponsors such as the Karl Schlecht Foundation, the Volksbank Karlsruhe and other donors.
Insights into the lab can be found on the foundation's website at https://www.stiftung-hfmka.de/foerderstrategie/streichquartett-labor and on the foundation's app hfm_foerdern. It can be downloaded from the Google or Apple Store.