The Hans Gál Prize for Ensembles will be awarded this year to the Viatores Quartet. The group is "one of the most promising young string quartets," the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature announced on Thursday. The prize includes €12,000 and will be presented on December 15th at a concert by the winners. The ensemble will also be featured in the annual program of Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz, with several concerts scheduled.

Viatores Quartet

The Viatores Quartet, consisting of Louisa Staples and Johannes Brzoska (violin), Miguel Erlich (viola), and Umut Sačlam (cello), was founded in 2023 at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. With their distinctive, sensitive sound, the four musicians have developed "independent interpretations that are intelligent, uncompromising, and free from fashionable trends," the jury explained. "They approach the scores with emotional depth and intellectual alertness, combining the highest instrumental quality with a highly personal musical expression." Thus, every work performed by the Viatores Quartet becomes an immediate, individual experience of artistic vision, possessing the power to directly touch and captivate an audience, the jury stated.

The Hans Gál Prize has been awarded annually to an international emerging ensemble since 2020. Since 2025, it has been complemented by a soloist prize of €5,000. Both awards commemorate the composer, musicologist, and educator Hans Gál (1890–1987), who was director of the Mainz Conservatory from 1929 to 1933. Due to his Hungarian-Jewish heritage, he was suspended after the Nazis seized power and initially emigrated to Austria, then to Great Britain in 1938. He became a British citizen in 1945 and taught at the University of Edinburgh until 1955.

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