Music in the Park Series: Jerusalem Quartet

Overview

Perhaps more than any other composer since Beethoven, Dmitri Shostakovich employed the string quartet as a vehicle for his deepest and most personal ruminations on the human condition. Composed over a span of 36 years, his 15 string quartets are deeply personal, and capture both his inner world and his evolution as a composer.

With a career spanning nearly three decades, the Jerusalem Quartet has achieved international recognition as one of the finest ensembles performing today. The Quartet is known for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and stunning depth of expression. Formed in Israel by four ex-pats born in Belarus, Ukraine, and California, the Jerusalem Quartet has been widely praised for their performances of the complete cycles of the quartets of Bartok, Beethoven, and Shostakovich. They regularly appear on the world’s great concert stages, including a recent Beethoven cycle at Wigmore Hall in London, a Bartok cycle at the Salzburg Festival, and appearances in Sweden, Amsterdam Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.