Announcing Shostakovich 15!

We are excited to announce that throughout 2015 we will be performing complete cycles of Shostakovich Quartets in cities including Washington DC, London, Oxford,  throughout the UK, across Ireland and in other international venues, in commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death.

We are very excited to perform Shostakovich's complete string quartets. As performers and listeners we have always found them to have a special resonance with audiences. While they display passion, drama and even humour, these quartets seem to somehow go further than that. There is an expressive emotional quality to this music that really speaks to people. Of course one cannot think of Shostakovich without considering the historical and political context within which he wrote his music and many of his quartets were very much influenced by his feelings towards the Soviet regime, War and the holocaust. The quartets are compelling, exciting, moving and are certainly one of the most significant contributions to the string quartet repertoire.

We'll be posting more info here about venues and dates and our experiences working on and performing these enthralling quartets. Also as part of this project we will be recording a selection of the quartets to be released at the end of 2014 on Signum Classics.