Renate Falkner, viola - Chestertown Piano Quartet
(USA)
Formed in 2024 at the National Music Festival, the Chestertown Piano Quartet is composed of faculty affiliated with some of the most prominent music schools in the United States, including Peabody, Yale, and Towson University. The members — Elizabeth Adams, violin, Renate Falkner, viola, Joseph Gotoff, cello, and Minji Nam, piano — are highly sought-after chamber musicians, having appeared in prestigious music festivals throughout the United States and internationally.
The Quartet has been named Ensemble-in-Residence at the Kent Cultural Alliance in Chestertown, MD for the 2025-26 season, and will be presenting works by underrepresented female composers of the 19th and 20th centuries alongside newly commissioned contemporary compositions and classic favorites. The quartet is committed to local education and to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration between the many diverse artists in residence at the KCA and throughout the greater context of Maryland and Washington D.C.’s vibrant cultural community.
Praised for her versatility and creativity, American violist Renate Falkner leads an active career as an educator, recitalist, and orchestral and chamber musician, performing across the U.S. and abroad. She is a frequent guest with groups such as the Baltimore, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh Symphonies. As a baroque violist, she has performed with Boston Baroque, Tafelmusik, the Yale Collegium Players, Baltimore’s Pro Musica Rara and her own Quartetto Antico. A frequent chamber music collaborator, Renate is Artistic Director of the Charm City Chamber Players and collaborates regularly with colleagues from the Peabody Institute and the BSO. Summer appearances have included the Verbier Festival, Switzerland, the Spoleto Festival, Italy, the Bellingham Festival of Music, WA, Carvalho Festival of Music in Fortaleza, Brazil, and the National Music Festival in Maryland. She has been heard in venues as diverse as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library, and in orchestras at Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. She has recorded for the Chandos, Nimbus, and Rezound music labels.
Renate earned degrees in both viola and Ancient Greek at the Oberlin College and Conservatory and also holds an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a doctorate from the Florida State University, where she explored the viola music of English composer York Bowen. After more than a decade on faculty at the University of North Florida and George Mason University, Renate joined the faculty of the prestigious Peabody Institute of Music, where she teaches viola and violin and coaches chamber music. She also serves as an Artist Affiliate at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and is an active board member of the American Viola Society.