The 2014-15 Season begins with the final chapter of a three-year residency of the Borodin Quartet at the Beethovenfest in Bonn. Probably no other ensemble has confronted, so profoundly and over such a long period, the works of the two great quartet composers in musical history Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich. In their three-year residency in Bonn, the Borodin Quartet played a total of twelve concerts, all the Beethoven string quartets and the most important Russian works of this genre.
“Here we have not four individual players, but a single sixteen-stringed instrument of great virtuosity”
FAZ, Gerhard Rohde, October 2013
“Ludwig van Beethoven, Nikolai Miaskowski, Dmitri Schostakowitsch - “3x Number 13”, the opus numbers of the quartets may have been identical, but performed by the Borodin Quartet each of the works stood for a distinct musical world.
“The experience the ensemble has with Shostakovich’s music was audible […] exceptional […] faithfulness to the composition, its musical realisation and mood.
“The Quartet turned the work into sound with precision but without compromise – from the dodecaphonesque, dazed sounding melodies in the viola at the beginning and end, via the screeching of the strings to an extend that made the listener want to run away and the noise like cacophonic placed passages in the middle section. No soundtrack in a horror film could have sounded more abysmal and constricting.
“[…] Beethoven’s string quartet in six parts, op. 130 in B flat major […] was presented by the quartet as a confident inventory of the master’s music. […] Beethoven, as multi-faceted as he was – simply beautiful.”
Kölnische Rundschau, September 2014
Throughout September and October the Quartet tours Australia with concerts in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Hobart, Newcastle and New Zealand performing in Wellington, Auckland, Chistchurch, Dunedin and Napier.
For more information on their tour of Australia please visit Musica Viva
For more information on their tour of New Zealand please visit Chamber Music New Zealand
