Jerusalem Quartet

The young Jerusalem Quartet opens its concert with Mozart's 'Hoffmeister Quartett' KV499. After the six quartets dedicated to Haydn, it was another nineteen months before Mozart once again applied himself to this format, in the summer of 1786. The unusual thing is that the 'Hoffmeister Quartett' was published on its own and not as part of a cycle of three or six works as was the custom in the eighteenth century. In 1903, Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) made his chamber music debut with the only string quartet he ever wrote. In his own words: 'The quartet, more than any of my early works, corresponds to my ideas about musical structure'. Apparently, Debussy thought that Ravel's quartet was too similar to his. There may be a few elements in common, such as a first part in the form of a sonata, and an opening theme from which later ideas are borrowed, but starting from the second part, Ravel's quartet possesses a rhapsodic, accommodating quality that is miles away from Debussy's world. Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote his Second Quartet in 1944 while staying at the summer cottage owned by the composers' union. It is a complicated and monumental work that demands virtuosity from each of the four quartet members and clearly takes Beethoven as its stylistic model.