Jerusalem Kwartet

Jerusalem Quartet: Alexander Pavlovsky & Sergei Bresler (violin), Ori Kam (viola), Kyril Zlotnikov (cello)

Jerusalem, rooted in the best Russian and Jewish tradition After three seasons, we can almost consider Quartet as our house quartet. These four bright twentysomethings string together the prizes and lyrical reviews. Their recipe: craftsmanship, panache, good taste and a pinch of gunpowder. According to many, Tchaikovsky's first string quartet (1840-1893) is the first successful Russian string quartet - in 1871 the quartet had already been considered the queen genre of chamber music for about a century. Tolstoy, who shed tears during the slow movement of this key work, based his famous novella about marital morality, adultery and passion murder on Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata' for violin and piano. Leos Janácek (1854-1928) recycled the name 'Kreutzer Sonata' again for his first string quartet, a musical response to Tolstoy's overly understanding attitude towards the murdering husband. While Chaikovsky was the 'most Russian' of the nineteenth-century composers - dixit Stravinsky - that predicate may well belong to Shostakovich (1906-1975) in the twentieth century. Shostakovich's fifteenth and final quartet is a series of six intensely mournful adagios, after which the choice between noose and bullet seems to force itself for a moment.