Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | String Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor, Op.144

A tasting menu of string quartet movements interspersed with readings made for an absorbing afternoon. 

An elegiac farewell as the Emerson String Quartet – retiring next year – close their Shostakovich cycle at the Southbank Centre. 

The Brodsky Quartet deliver deeply moving performances of all 15 Shostakovich string quartets, with added value and insight from writers Elizabeth Wilson and Marina Frolova-Walker. 

One of the most moving and exhilarating experiences one can experience, the Brodsky Quartet performs the entire cycle of Shostakovich string quartets in the Perth International Arts Festival.

Performed chronologically in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, The Globe’s candlelit Jacobean theatre, the 15 Shostakovich string quartets made an astonishing impression in such concentrated form. 

Few concert settings are as beautiful as St Martin’s Church in Colchester. A deconsecrated 15th-century church, it served as the venue for a concert of Shostakovich’s Third and Fifteenth String Quartets, played by the Gould Quartet (named after their first violinist Thomas Gould), part of the Roman River Festival. For a town with not many classical concerts, this was quite a treat.