Over the last three decades Eckart Runge was founding member and cellist of the Artemis Quartet, and marked the groups characteristic handwriting throughout all different line-ups. The ensemble appears regularly in all major concert venues worldwide and has its own, sold-out series in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. In 2019 he decided to leave the group, in order to pursue new artistic dreams and handed his chair over two his wonderful successor, the acclaimed Dutch cellist Harriet Krijgh. 

The quartet was founded in 1989 at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. Its mentors include Walter Levin, Alfred Brendel, the Alban Berg Quartet, and the Juilliard and Emerson Quartet. First prizes at the ARD competition in Munich and the Premio Borciani in Reggio Emilia marked the beginning of their international career. In 2003, the Artemis Quartet was awarded an honorary membership at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn.

The quartet has been recording exclusively for Warner/ERATO since 2005. Many of the ensemble’s releases under this label have been granted awards such as the ‘ECHO-Klassik’ and the ‘Diapason d’Or’.

Performing contemporary music has always been an important part of the ensemble’s philosophy, believing it is imperative to remain sensitive to new endeavours in established music. Mauricio Sotelo (2004), Jörg Widmann (2006), and Thomas Larcher (2008) have all created works especially for the Artemis Quartet. In 2014, Daniel Schnyder’s concerto for string quartet and orchestra was premiered by the ensemble in Frankfurt. The quartet started its own competition for a new piece in 2015. The winning piece was Eduard Demetz’s 2nd string quartet ‘Broken Islands’, which was successfully performed throughout Europe.