Dante Quartet

KRYSIA OSOSTOWICZ, OSCAR PERKS (violins)

YUKO INOUE (viola)

RICHARD JENKINSON ('cello)

Tchaikovsky

Quartet #1 (Rachinsky) Op 11 in D major

Shostakovich

Quartet #11 (Shirinsky) Op 122 in F minor

Beethoven

Razumovsky Quartet #3 Op 59 in C major

The Dante Quartet, one of the UK’s finest ensembles, is known for its imaginative programming and impassioned performances. The quartet was founded in 1995 and chose its name to reflect the idea of an epic and adventurous journey. The Dante Quartet has been honoured with the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Music and has also received international awards for its recordings. The wide age-range of the Dante Quartet’s members helps to create a harmonious and exciting blend, marrying youthful enthusiasm with richness of experience and consummate technical skill.

“Playing of spellbinding atmosphere.” The Guardian

Tchaikovsky's delightful first quartet, which he dedicated to a botanist friend, and whose lovely slow movement theme may be familiar, shows his lyricism and melodic invention, crafted into the classical string quartet form.

For Shostakovich, string quartets were the way that he explored his most personal feelings, during challenging times. The seven brief movements of the 11th, dedicated to the 2nd violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, are dark and enigmatic, linked by a single motif.

Beethoven's Op 59 Quartets were commissioned by Count Razumovsky, Russian ambassador and a patron of music. The third is the most complex and dramatic - it draws from Mozart's later quartet writing and conveys a sense of Russian folksong, but takes us far beyond both.