Quirine Viersen is one of the most prominent musical figures of the younger generation on the international scene. With her intense, expressive, and virtuosic playing, she has succeeded in winning over colleagues, the press, and audiences with her great musicality and mastery.
Quirine received her first cello lessons from her father, Yke Viersen, a cellist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. At the Amsterdam Conservatory, her teachers were first Jean Decroos and later Dmitri Ferschtman. She completed her studies in 1997 as a student of Heinrich Schiff at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
She has performed with, among others, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Jena Philharmonic, the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders, and the National Orchestra of Mexico. She has collaborated with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, Ingo Metzmacher, Valery Gergiev, Jean Fournet, Jan Willem de Vriend, and Zubin Mehta. During her 2010 tour of the U.S., she was warmly embraced by critics and audiences alike.
Quirine is also a much-sought-after musician in the chamber music scene. She is a welcome guest at festivals such as the Delft Chamber Music Festival, the Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, the Mondsee Tage, the Salzburg Festival, and the Stavanger Chamber Music Festival. Together with pianist Silke Avenhaus, with whom she has formed a successful duo since 1996, she has quickly established an important place in the international concert scene. The duo has now released five highly acclaimed CDs featuring works by both well-known and lesser-known composers.
Quirine plays a 1715 Joseph Guarnerius Filius Andreae cello, made available to her by the Musical Instrument Fund.
My instrument, the ex-André Navarra Guarnerius, Joseph Filius Andreae from 1715—now 301 years old—is still an incredible miracle for me to play every day, thanks to the wonderful Musical Instrument Fund! Every time I unpack my cello, I’m amazed by its beauty; every time I play the first notes, I’m delighted by its warm and radiant sound. The instrument also varies greatly in how easily it responds to the bow, it suffers greatly when it gets too damp; the wood has some truly fascinating knots—something that must have been a huge risk for Joseph Guernerius, since they could eventually fall out—but when the wood gets damp, the vibrations diminish significantly, even harder to get through, and I have to be very precise with my bowing—a major challenge—and sometimes I can even get quite angry, almost as if it were a person; in a way, it is—you communicate with your instrument and with the audience. And that communication is an immense source of richness in my life. I hope to keep telling stories with “my” Guernerius for a long time to come!
