Candour, ebb and flow give this cabaret appeal

bbc music magazine

The Jerusalem Quartet is a regular performer with Duke Arts, always bringing their trademark ‘passion, precision and warmth’ (The Times). They return with Mozart’s so-called ‘Dissonance’ Quartet, which features some of the composer’s boldest harmonic writing. The dissonant theme continues with Shostakovich’s Twelfth Quartet, which utilizes the forces of the 12-tone row as he experiments with atonal techniques. Unlike other more traditional string quartets, there are only two movements in this vigorous, thrilling work. The piece’s dedicatee Dmitri Tsyganov (first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet) was known for his dynamic playing style, which is matched in the energy of this piece, with the players pushed to their physical limits. Bringing us back to more light-hearted fare is Brahms, who referred to his String Quartet No. 3 as ‘a useless trifle to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony,’ when referencing his process of writing the quartet alongside his First Symphony.

Program

Mozart: Quartet in C-Major, K 465 (“Dissonance”)
Shostakovich: Quartet No. 12 in D Flat-Major, op. 133
Brahms: Quartet in B Flat-Major, op. 67

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