Borodin Quartet

With over 70 uninterrupted years in existence, the Borodin Quartet is today’s oldest string quartet. Alto violinist Igor Naidin, who has been a member since 1996, says that each new member “hears how the other members play in an easily recognisable style and is immediately absorbed into the tradition.”

Thus the original spirit of the Quartet lives on through the new members. As the British newspaper the Telegraph put it, “Listening to the Quartet play Shostakovich [...], it was impossible to resist an uncanny sense of being taken back to the root of something. [...] It's the refusal to exaggerate, and a pearly, immaculate quality in the balance of the four parts.”

The original Quartet had a close relationship with Shostakovich. The ensemble often played quartets for him, and the members offered advice and feedback before a premiere performance.

Here, the Quartet performs String Quartet No. 6, in which untroubled lightness pours forth, and No. 13, in which Shostakovich navigates a darkly fatalistic musical landscape. Schubert’s Quartet Movement in C Minor is also a dramatic masterpiece that provides an elegant contrast to Tchaikovsky’s atmospheric and melodically beautifully Album pour enfants, Op. 39, originally music for piano.