Work: String Quartet in F major, Op.41 no.2

One would never had guessed that the Ébènes had not played Shostakovich's dark Eighth String Quartet before this tour, such was the way their performance transcended individual agony to address human despair in general.

String quartets don’t come much more ‘period’ than the Quatuor Mosaïques, even if their ideas of historical authenticity are more flexible than the ensemble which brought them together (Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus Wien).