This season’s ‘Paul Woodhouse’ Concert will be given by the brilliant young Royal String Quartet from Poland.

They were formed in 1998 and over the past few years have gained a reputation as one of the world’s most interesting and dynamically developing string quartets of the young generation.

They will be making their first appearance at a Richmond Concert event and will be performing in one of the best venues, from an acoustic point of view, in the UK – the very beautiful St Mary’s Church situated on the Riverside at Twickenham.

The Royal String Quartet have attracted rave reviews for their concerts with such superlatives as “technically superb”, and “youthful energy not in short supply”.

The list of awards the quartet has won is impressive. Awards such as the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005, the Special Prize of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2007, the First Prize and the Grand Prix at the 9th Carlo Silva International Competition in Casale Monferrato in 2000, the Second Prize at the 7th International Contemporary Chamber Music Competition in Kraków in 2003, the Special Jury Prize at the 1st International String Quartet Competition in Kuhmo,Finland in 2004 and the Third Prize in Banff’s 8th International String Quartet Competition in Canada in 2004.

Like the Kungsbacka Piano Trio which opens the 2008-9 Season, the Royal String Quartet were members of the BBC’s New Generation Artists scheme between 2004 and 2006. This enabled them to perform in several prestigious festivals, broadcast several times and to make recordings such as their performance of the Mendelssohn Octet with the French Psophos Quartet, who performed for the RCS some seasons ago.

Since 2004 the Quartet has run its own chamber music festival in Warsaw under the title ‘Kwartesencja’ which has won a wide audience and media recognition as being named the ‘Cultural Highlight of the year 2004’.

In the Spring of 2008 they recorded the Szymanowski Quartets on the Hyperion label. This will add to their existing discography of four CDs: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven on the DUX label, which was nominated for the Fyderyk Award of the Polish recording industry in 2002; Astor Piazzola – Tango on the Sony label, which was given the Fyderyk Award in 2002; string quartets by other Polish composers such as the father of Polish music, Moniuszko, Szymanowski and Bacewicz on the BearTon label in 2006; and Juliusz Zarebski’s Piano Quintet with the pianist Wojciech Switala again on the BeArTon label in 2006.