“A mighty struggle...the most heroic of all Beethoven’s utterances”: Robert Simpson describing the Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) that ends the original version of his B flat Quartet, the longest he ever wrote. It is an inspiring work to close our opening concert and we welcome back one of Britain’s most distinguished quartets to play it. The Brodskys are also among the finest interpreters of the quartets of Shostakovich, who wept when he heard his powerful 8th Quartet for the first time. He thought of it as his epitaph, though he lived for another 15 years.

“...it was the more stripped back, though no less affecting, textures of Shostakovich’s profoundly moving eighth quartet...that fully revealed why this quartet is considered one of the world’s best.” 
Sydney Morning Herald