Born in Romania in 1975, Corina Belcea began her violin studies with Radu Bozgan and Stefan Gheorghiu. At the age of 16 she was invited by Sir Yehudi Menuhin to study at his school in England where her teacher was Natalia Boyarskaya. She continued her studies at the Royal College of Music with Felix Andrievsky where, in 1994, she founded the Belcea Quartet.
Corina is a prize winner at the Yehudi Menuhin, Kloster Schöntal and Wieniawski competitions and has performed at the Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elisabeth Hall and Purcell Room in London, Atheneum Bucharest, Theatre des Châtelet and Theatre de Champs-Élysée, Brussels Bozar. Together with the Belcea Quartet she has won the Bordeaux and the Osaka competitions.
Corina was professor of chamber music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and since 2011 she is Violin Professor at the University for the Arts in Bern. In 2022 she joined the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel as a Chamber Music Master in Residence. She has served as a jury member in the ARD chamber music competition, the Queen Elisabeth violin competition, chaired the last Geneva String Quartet Competition and will join the jury of the next Bordeaux string quartet competition.
With the Belcea Quartet she has toured the world playing in London’s Wigmore Hall, where the quartet was in residence for three years, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Hong Kong, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Lisbon Gulbekian Auditorium, Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts, Konserthuset Stockholm, Köln Philharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg ElbPhilharmonie, Luxemburg Philharmonie , Taipei National Concert Hall, Alter Oper Frankfurt, Munich Hercules Saal. The quartet was residence at Berlin’s Boulez Saal and is currently in residence at the Vienna Konzerthaus. The quartet’s partners have included Thomas Ades, Thomas Larcher, Mihaela Ursuleasa, Michael Collins, Martin Fröst, Paul Lewis, Imogen Cooper, Natalie Clein, Valentin Erben, Angelika Kirchlager, Ian Bostridge, Matthias Goerne , Anne Sophie von Otter, Tull Fellner, Antoine Tamestit, Piotr Anderszewski, Tabea Zimmermann, Jean Guihen Queyras, Bertrand Chamayou, Barbara Hannigan, Vilde Frang.
The quartet is dedicated to commissioning new works, – among them Mark-Anthony Turnage’s string quartets “Twisted Blues with Twisted Ballad” in 2010, “Contusion” in 2014, Thomas Larcher’s “Lucid dreams” in 2015, Krzysztof Penderecki’s 4th string quartet in 2016, Julian Anderson’s 4th quartet as well as the 3rd string quartet by Joseph Phibbs – which was premiered at Carnegie Hall. Next season the quartet will premiere Bret Dean’s string quartet no. 4, also at Carnegie Hall.
The musicians created their very own Belcea Quartet Trust, whose main aims are to support and inspire young string quartets through series of intensive coaching sessions organized according to the needs of each selected ensemble, as well as to support commissioning new works for string quartet from today’s leading composers.
The Belcea Quartet has an impressive discography. During its long-term association with EMI Classics, the quartet recorded the complete Britten and Bartók quartets as well as works by Schubert, Brahms, Mozart, Debussy, Ravel and Dutilleux, amongst others. In 2012 and 2013, the quartet recorded the complete Beethoven quartets live in the Benjamin Britten Studio in Snape. This recording was released under ZigZag Territories and as with its predecessors, this CD has been met with critical acclaim: it has been recognised with such prizes as Gramophone Award. In 2015, the quartet released its highly acclaimed recording of works by Webern, Berg and Schoenberg to coincide with its 20th jubilee. September 2016 saw the release of the quartet’s recording of the complete Brahms string quartets & piano quintet, a CD acclaimed by the press and awarded with a Diapason d’or of the year 2016. The Shostakovich album, including the 3rd string quartet and the piano quintet with Piotr Anderszewski, was released in April 2018. The quartet has recently released on Alpha Classics the recording of the two Brahms sextets with Tabea Zimmermann and Jean Guihen Queyras and this year will see the release of their Debussy/Szymanowsky disc and their octet Mendelssohn/Enescu recording with Quatuour Ébène.
The Belcea Quartet’s performances of the complete Beethoven string quartets at Vienna’s Konzerthaus in 2012 were broadcast by Mezzo TV and were released – on DVD and Blue Ray disk – by the label Euroarts in fall 2014. The release was accompanied by Jean-Claude Mocik’s documentary of the entire project, “Looking for Beethoven”.