After starting the 2015/16 Season at Wigmore Hall where they continued their complete journey of Beethoven and Shostakovich String Quartets, the Borodin Quartet brings its 70th anniversary celebrations to the USA. How appropriate that the world’s most famous Russian quartet marks 70 successful years of music making with performances of three of their countrymen’s most celebrated composers: their namesake Borodin; Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. However for their opening concert at the Kimmel Centre in Philadelphia they are also joined by cellist David Finckel for Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 956.
Here are more details of the tour:
10 October - Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center, Philhadelphia
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society
13 October - Coral Gables Congregational Church, Miami
Friends of Chamber Music Miami
16 October - Nightingale Concert Hall, Reno
Argenta Concert Series
18 October - The Center for Performing Arts, Menlo-Atherton
Music at Menlo
21 October - Ace Gallery, Los Angeles
Ace Gallery Concerts
The Quartet received glowing reviews which you can read below:
“[The Borodin Quartet] played with polished professionalism. Ruben Aharonian [lead] a focused reading that was at times playful, at times longing and always fascinating to hear. In the third movement, the melancholy of cellist Vladimir Balshin and violist Igor Naidin blended beautifully with Aharonian and second violin Sergei Lomovsky, providing superb advocacy for a piece that was one of Tchaikovsky’s favorites of all his works. One of the evening’s highlights came in [Borodin’s Notturno] when Aharonian and Lomovsky elicited a gorgeous, organ-like sound that befitted the sanctuary setting. The Borodin Quartet’s sound is rich, dark and deep, and the playing at a high level of technical competency.”
(Coral Gables Congregational Church, Friends of Chamber Music Miami) Dave Rosenbaum, Miami Herald
“The Borodin performed the familiar melodies of the Notturno with grace, panache and conviction, and their rhythmic freedom was met by their well-crafted homogeneity of tone [...] one of the greatest performances [of Shostakovich’s Eight Quartet]. There were discernible moments of hope through the labyrinth of mental and physical anguish, so properly conveyed in the final Largo. This was music modelled after the composer’s heart, realized at a level only few performances attain. From the opening Adagio [of Tchaikovsky Quartet No. 2], the musicians displayed an affinity for the language of late Russian Romanticism, as gorgeous melodies were bound by a tight, visceral rhythmic pulse…a resplendent performance.”
(The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton) Elijah Ho, San Jose Mercury News
“[In Shostakovich’s Eight Quartet] the listener is supposed to be overwhelmed. And that is certainly what happened in this performance. Every movement was structured perfectly and so theatrically conveyed by the performers. One could cut the dark tension with a knife. Tchaikovsky’s Second Quartet [showed] the quartet’s ability to form a smooth choir of voices, and their comfortable physical language, which unites them into one single, larger body, and [the] highest level of musicianship. The quartet’s nuanced sounds and capacity for storytelling and mood-setting could transport any listener from earth to heaven and back to earth again. This group’s artistry whets our appetite for more.”
(The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton) Theodora Martin, Peninsula Reviews
