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The Kuss Quartet played the full cycle of Beethoven string quartets in five concerts. With the legendary "Paganini set" of four Stradivarius instruments, these turned out to be special days.

With exceptional nuance, lead flautist Juliette Hurel demonstrated her Olympian skills in Bruno Mantovani's technically exhausting, often violent work. With the flute in mind, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s wildly upbeat Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in C-minor ‘Titan’ made for new discoveries in Bruckner.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet gave his thought-provoking, violent and percussive take on Bartók, Ravel and Beethoven - intelligent and uncompromising performance at its best. 

 Jean-Efflam Bavouzet impresses in Gallic repertoire, but his Beethoven took longer to win our reviewer around. 

The four pieces – all U.S. premières – created a portrait of Boulez minus Boulez, reminding me of a middle school art exercise in which we were asked to draw an egg without any white crayons.

There are few works in the classical repertoire as expansive as Mozart’s Quintet in C major, K515 – the opening Allegro is actually longer than any movement of its kind before Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony whilst its spacious character seems to prefigure Schubert.

Contemporary music ensembles can be rather nebulous entities, their repertoire often necessitating complete line-up changes between pieces and the "whole" of the ensemble rarely being needed at the same time.