YCAT Hans Keller Artists

In 1984, the year before he died, Hans Keller received a letter from Michael Kaye, the former general manager of both the London Symphony Orchestra and the South Bank Centre, who had recently been recruited by the trustees of a brand new organisation, the ‘Young Concert Artists Trust’. YCAT’s aim, Kaye explained, was ‘to help a limited number of young concert artists of outstanding merit by providing expert guidance and management at the very beginning of their professional careers.’ This kind of help, he wrote, ‘is so much more valuable to a young artist than simply another prize or award.’

The artists were to be selected by audition, and Kaye wanted Keller to be one of the judges: ‘I need hardly tell you that the quality of judging is crucial to what we are trying to achieve and, therefore, how much we should all value your help.’

Keller agreed and spent three full days hearing candidates in July 1984. The following year, despite being mortally ill, he returned to judge the 1985 YCAT finalists only 6 weeks before he died.

Four decades later, YCAT’s mission remains the same, and many of its alumni are now household names. However, embarking on a career as a concert artist became harder than ever after the musical world was thrown into chaos by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust was happy to be in a position to do something to help YCAT’s artists survive 2020, and then consolidated its support in a new partnership with YCAT in 2021.

Since then, the Trust has been underpinning YCAT’s support for exceptional young string quartets, with a special award in memory of Hans Keller.  The current YCAT Hans Keller Artists are the Fibonacci Quartet, selected at the YCAT public finals in May 2024.

The Fibonacci Quartet are prolific prize-winners and their numerous awards include both First Prize and Audience Prize at the 2024 Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in Italy — the only ensemble ever to win both prizes. Originally formed at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Fibonaccis are now a Resident Ensemble at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid with Gűnther Pichler and at the Dutch String Quartet Academy in Amsterdam.

During their first season with YCAT the Quartet have performed extensively throughout Europe, including concerts in the UK, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and France. They have undertaken residencies with ProQuartet in Paris and Britten Pears Arts in Aldeburgh, as well as teaching and performing at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff in their position as Resident Quartet.

Additionally the Quartet regularly give radio and television broadcasts, including on Dutch National Television, Dutch Concert Radio, BBC Radio 3, and RAI TV in Italy. They were honoured to work closely with Kaija Saariaho shortly before her death on a new recording of Terra Memoria made at the Barbican as part of the BBC Total Immersion Series.

In March 2025 the Royal Academy of Music awarded the Fibonacci Quartet its Nina Drucker Fellowship for the 2025-26 year, designed to enable talented string quartets to rehearse intensively as they launch their career.  The 2025-26 season will also see them in collaboration with YCAT’s Hans Keller Composer Fellow, Fergus Hall, who is also supported by the Trust, and they will premiere his new work for string quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 30 September.

The Adelphi Quartet became the inaugural YCAT Hans Keller Artists in 2021, and received support from the Trust for three years. Formed in 2017, the Adelphi Quartet studied with Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet) at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Having won first prize in the 2020 Irene Steels-Wilsing Foundation Competition, they took third prize and a special jury prize at the Paulo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in 2021, and in 2022 they were runners up in the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, where they also won the Esterházy Foundation Prize.

In 2021 the Trust also began its support for the creation of new works for string quartet, and was delighted to collaborate with YCAT to commission Bushra El-Turk’s moving work Saffron Dusk for the Adelphi Quartet. Composer and Quartet continued to work together, and the Adelphis premiered Bushra El-Turk’s Painting Secrets (commissioned by Britten Pears Arts) at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2022.

Born in London to Lebanese parents, Bushra El-Turk’s work is often defined by the integration of musics and musicians from different cultural traditions, as well as a compulsion to highlight and challenge sociocultural issues, and a blurring of written and improvisational elements.

Saffron Dusk was inspired by the horrific explosion in Beirut in August 2020, which caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries, as well as leaving over 300,000 people homeless. Bushra El-Turk writes:

‘This piece is dedicated to the victims and the families of those who lost their loved ones in the Beirut non-Atomic bomb explosion of 4th August 2020 where over 200 lives were lost and over 7000 of those injured had lost their homes. My recent trip to Beirut in March 2021, seeing the ruins and destruction for myself and hearing the stories of those who had just survived it by seconds, brought those feelings back. After writing this piece, I prayed through the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, which has become a habit, to find the words that match the feelings of the grief I felt during that time in order to title this piece.’

The Adelphi Quartet made this recording of Saffron Dusk at the Bibliotheksaal in Polling in Bavaria, and it was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in May 2021. Bushra El-Turk said afterwards, ‘I feel blessed to have had a really wonderful quartet who understood the piece and played it with such energy, feeling, depth and dedication.’

The Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust is very pleased to work together with YCAT to support such remarkable young artists, in memory of Hans Keller, for whom the string quartet was the most purely musical form of composition and the closest to his heart. Keller’s contribution to the development of the string quartet in the second half of the twentieth century was immense. He coached many of the leading British ensembles of the time and, during his 20 years at the BBC, not only developed performance opportunities and enabled the best quartet-playing to be heard, but also did much to broaden awareness of this remarkable repertoire. Through his own broadcast talks and lectures around the country he made an outstanding contribution to the education of the audience for chamber music, and he had a unique ability to speak meaningfully to both musicians and their public at the same time. He inspired many composers to write new works for string quartet, including Benjamin Britten, who dedicated his own Third String Quartet to the man who, he said, ‘knows more about the string quartet, and understands it better, than anybody alive.’