Aviv Quartet to perform at FJCC March 23
By Cheryl Orson
Feb. 15, 2008

Founded in 1997 by four young musicians, the Aviv Quartet has appeared at many venues throughout Israel, including the Jerusalem Music Center (Mishkenot Shaananim), the Jaffa Music Center, and the Tel-Aviv Museum of Arts.

Since their debut tour to Paris (Auditorium Louvre), London (Wigmore Hall), and New York (Weill Recital Carnegie Hall), they received repeated invitations for encore performances from each venue. The Aviv Quartet now regularly tours in Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, South Africa, China, Israel, the U.S., and Canada.

On March 23, this internationally renowned group will make a rare New Jersey appearance at the Flemington Jewish Community Center. It is their only New Jersey appearance scheduled in their current tour.

The Aviv Quartet's history

In 1998, the quartet participated in the summer course given by members of the Amadeus Quartet at the Royal Academy of Music in London and by June of that year the Aviv Quartet was already named the Israeli representative at the Encounters Chamber Music Course in Jerusalem under the direction of Maestro Isaac Stern with the participation of members of the Emerson and Juilliard Quartets. This was followed in July of that year by the group being named the resident quartet at the Kfar Blum Festival (Upper Galilee Music Days).

In May of 1998, the Aviv Quartet won second prize at the International String Quartet Competition at the Prague Spring Festival and in October of that year the Aviv Quartet studied with the members of the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne, Germany and in the Royal School of Music at Rotterdam with Ben-Zion Shamir.

In April of 1999, the Aviv Quartet was awarded the first prize, specifically, the Amadeus Quartet Prize, in the international competition (the Charles Hennen Competition) in Heerlen, Holland and in May of that year the Aviv Quartet was awarded the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Germany Prize and a special prize of the Ministry of Education of the State of Israel.

In March of 2001 the Aviv Quartet again performed in Paris at the Midis Musicaux in Theatre du Châtelet and toured the U.K. and Ireland (Wigmore Hall, Warwick Arts Festival, Dublin and St. John's Smith Square) with pianist Louis Demetrius Alvanis. During June of 2001 the Aviv Quartet participated in the Alban Berg Quartet Anniversary concert series in Tel Aviv to both great public and critical acclaim. After participating in the Upper Galilee Chamber Music Festival, they were invited to perform in the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival 2001 and to debut in the Dubrovnik Festival in December in Wien Konzerthaus.

Earning ever more acclaim, on Feb. 6, 2002, the Aviv Quartet played their debut concert in Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Now following their first recording, the group is currently touring in the U.S., South America, South Africa, and Australia.

Aviv Quartet's

playbook and prizes

Aviv Quartet has won a series of internationally prestigious prizes including: First Prize and the Grand Prize in Melbourne Chamber Music Competition, Australia (1999); Top Prize and Critics' Prize in Bordeaux Quartets Competition, France (2003); First Prize at Amadeus Quartet Contest (Heerlen, Netherlands 1999); Special Schubert Prize at Schubert Competition in Graz, Austria (2003); and Second Prize in Prague Spring Quartets Competition (1998). Aviv was also proclaimed as the "Best Young Ensemble" by the Culture Ministries of Germany (1999) and Israel (2000), and received the special award for the Best Musical Ensemble in Israel (2003).

During the last seven years Aviv Quartet has performed on some of the world's most important stages including: Carnegie Hall, The New School, and Lincoln Center in New York; the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati Music Academy, Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London; Louvre Auditorium, Chatelet, Sainte Chapelle, and Theatre de la Ville in Paris; the Sydney Opera House; Vienna and Stockholm Concert Houses; Cologne Philharmonic; and Beethoven House in Bonn; Tonhalle in Zurich.

The Aviv has also made several concert tours in the United States, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, China, Australia, Ireland, Latvia, and France and has taken part in prestigious festivals including: Lockenhaus and Salzburger Schlosskonzerte in Austria; Obersdorfer, Schwetzingen and others in Germany; Montpelier, Parc Floral, Colmar, Luberon, and Aix a Province and others in France; Le Folle Journee (Nantes, Lisbon, Bilbao); Dubrovnik in Croatia; Gotland and Lankoping in Sweden; Oistrakh in Estonia; Jerusalem, Eilat, and others in Israel.

Their repertoire includes about 100 chamber works representing 250 years of chamber composition, from Mozart and Haydn, to all of the Beethoven quartets, the greatest works of the Romantic Period, three generations of Czech music, 20th century composers, a wide range of Russian music, from Tchaikovsky and Borodin to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, whose complete set of 15 quartets and the Piano Quintet are in the process of being recorded by Aviv (seven quartets and the Piano Quintet of Shostakovich were also presented in Wigmore Hall and received a glowing review in the April edition of The Strad; the complete cycle of Shostakovich's quartets were presented in 2007 at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland).

Aviv also performs Israeli and international contemporary music by Schnittke, Kancheli, Wisenberg, Kopytman, Brener, and others. The Quartet has performed almost all the important quintets, cooperating with both local and international soloists.

Aviv has also given a series of Master Classes in Israel, Sweden, Canada, and South Africa; the Quartet and its members were invited to teach at the last meeting of the International Music Academy (Italy, June-July 2006); members of the Aviv Quartet teach at several academies in Israel and abroad.

Aviv Quartet members

First violinist Sergey Ostrovsky, and a founder of the Aviv Quartet, is a winner of the Israel National Competition-Ilona Korenhouser Prize, and fifth-place prize-winner of the Lipitzer Competition (Italy 1995). He has performed with major orchestras in Israel and around the world including Israel Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Cape Town Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, and the "Amadeus" Chamber Orchestra (Poland). Born in 1975 to a family of musicians, he began playing at age 6. He immigrated to Israel in 1991 and continued his studies at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv. Graduated from the Rotterdam Royal Conservatory, he received a post-graduate degree from Amsterdam Conservatory. He currently plays on 1716 Granccino violin, purchased with a great help of a donor and from Tzfonot Tarbut, a non profit organization for arts and artists in Israel.

Second violinist Evgenia Epshtein was born in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Russia. She, too, began her violin studies at age 6 and graduated from the High School for Talented Musicians. She immigrated to Israel in 1990 and studied at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music and at the Rotterdam Royal Academy where she got her masters degree and where she was the recipient of prizes in violin and chamber music competitions and took part in master classes. She has acted as the concertmistress of the Young Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was a member of "I Fiamini" (Belgium). During the 1997-1998 season, she was the concertmaster of the second violin section of the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra. She is currently a member of several chamber projects, performing music from the baroque to the contemporary and plays a 17th century violin by Ruggeri granted by the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation.

Violinist Shuli Waterman was born in Haifa, Israel and studied viola at the Royal academy of music in London. She was the first-prize winner of the Theodor Holland Viola Competition at the Royal Academy. She completed her studies at the Rubin Academy at Tel Aviv University and was the recipient of the Daniel Binyamini Viola Scholarship. She has participated in master classes and is one of the leading members of the Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble. She has recently recorded with the Beethoven String quintet (Ysaÿe records), and will be performing with them the complete Mozart string quintets at concerts in London, Italy and Israel.

Grand-prize winner of the 2001 Vriendenkrans Competition in Amsterdam, Canadian cellist Rachel Mercer made her European recital debut in the Concertgebouw Kleine Zaal. She has performed as a soloist across Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Balkans, South Africa, and Israel including appearances with the Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre, Durban, and Banff Festival orchestras. She was a member of the Metro String Quartet from 1994-2000 and joined the Aviv Quartet in 2002. She is also principal cellist of Via Salzburg, a chamber series in Toronto. She began cello studies at age 3 in Edmonton, Alberta. She received degrees from the University of Toronto, the New England Conservatory, and holds a solo diploma from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. She has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council and plays an 1824 McConnell Nicolaus Gagliano cello on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts.