Quatuor Danel

‘Friends & Mentors’

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 7

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 10

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 5

Across three concerts, Quatuor Danel traces the personal and political landscape of Shostakovich’s life through a selection of his string quartets – works he once described as a “diary”. This private world gives unguarded reflections ranging from fleeting joy to grief and introspection to resistance, sardonic humour and the grotesque.

Mentored by the Borodin Quartet, Quatuor Danel has established itself as one of the foremost interpreters of Russian music including the Shostakovich quartets.

‘I was agog with wonder at the finesse and delicacy’ THE TIMES

The three themed concerts explore ‘Friends and Mentors’, ‘Folk Themes’ and ‘From Cradle to Grave’.

‘Friends & Mentors’

Quartets 5, 7 and 10 are, in turn, expressions of thanks, mourning and kinship to those who shaped and shared his inner world: from the Beethoven Quartet who premiered many of Shostakovich’s quartets; to his first wife, Nina, who had died six years earlier; and a kindred spirit in the composer Mieczysław Weinberg.