Seasons 2026-2027: 25 years Ragazze Quartet

This year marks our 25th anniversary, which we will be celebrating by placing extra emphasis on the female perspective in the upcoming cultural season. As an all-female string quartet, we’re continuing along a path we’ve long been following, with programmes in which female creators and artists take centre stage. From September onwards, we’ll be treating you to programmes featuring female creators and artists we’ve worked with before, but of course we’ll also be embarking on some wonderful new collaborations. Will you be joining us?

See below the most notable programmes in the 2026–2027 season:

• As curator of the tenth edition of September Me international chamber music festival, we are partnering with Ayanna Witter-Johnson. The British-Jamaican singer, songwriter, pianist, cellist and composer, with whom we have performed before, is the Artist in Focus at the festival. The upcoming edition of September Me will have the theme ‘she/her’, through which we will be putting female creators and musicians in the spotlight. The programme includes Anne-Maartje Lemereis, Hadewych van Gent & Jeneba Kanneh-Mason and the Netherlands Chamber Choir conducted by Sofi Jeannin, as well as music theatre by oboist Kayva van Gangelen, marimba virtuoso Tatiana Koleva and a programme featuring LUDWIG & Boys Won’t Be Boys. See September Me for more information and details of our own performances at the festival and the website of the festival for the full programme.
• Together with soprano Katharine Dain and various (largely female) soloists, we will be releasing our tenth CD in September, featuring a selection of works from the song cycle They Have Waited Long Enough. The song cycle retells the stories of historical and mythological women, set to music by female composers. The CD release also marks the start of a short tour with the programme, performing at the Gaudeamus Festival and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, where a selection of the works will be performed. The entire cycle will be performed at the September Me festival. A fourth song cycle is currently in preparation for the Wonderfeel Festival in the summer of 2027. See They Have Waited Long Enough for more information and the concert schedule for this programme.
• Kreutzersonata is a compelling musical theatre production in which a jealous husband, played by actor Benja Bruijning, recounts the murder of his wife. His story, driven by suspicion and pride, is propelled by the music of Janáček, whose First String Quartet was inspired by Tolstoy’s famous novella of the same name, on which the production is based. What few people know is that Sofia Tolstaya, Tolstoy’s wife, wrote two novels in response to her husband’s story. Inspired by her perspective on the murder, we are developing a multi-layered production exploring love, power, art and destruction at a time when femicide remains painfully relevant. Kreutzersonata premieres in November. For more information and the concert schedule, see Kreutzersonata.
• Starting from March 2027 we will reprise our programme Lamento. In this programme, we reflect on the various ways in which people commemorate their deceased loved ones through music from different eras. From Gesualdo (late Renaissance), through Purcell’s famous Dido’s Lament (Baroque), to the Romantic period with Mendelssohn’s String Quartet Op. 80. We will also be performing Elegy in Me, a deeply personal work for string quartet composed for us by Seung-Won Oh. In Elegy in Me, Oh’s affinity with traditional Korean music and customs resonates, as she seeks a path from grief to hope. See Lamento for further information and concert dates.

We will continue to tour the Netherlands with Voces Intimae until December 2026, weaving together three voices from the north: Scandinavian folk music with string quartets by Kaija Saariaho and Jean Sibelius. The programme is complemented by arrangements of Danish folk music for string quartet from the Danish String Quartet’s album Last Leaf. See Voces Intimae for more information and the concert schedule.

You can find all our concerts for the 2026–2027 season in our events calender .