The fifteen string quartets composed by Dmitri Shostakovich established him as one of the masters of this genre. These works show him at his most concentrated and most intimate. Although each is quite different in form and structure, every bar of them reveals some aspect of the composer’s character, from wild humour to black despair, with an all-pervasive nervous tension. Without texts, descriptive titles or any overt public agenda, they can be heard as revelations of the composer’s musicianship in its most essential form.

For its first release on BIS Records, the Jerusalem Quartet presents three of Shostakovich’s quartets. Although the Second String Quartet was composed in 1944, its character is elusive and it makes no direct reference to the war. Yet this is a substantive work, dark, powerful and at times dissonant. The Seventh Quartet, consisting of three short movements played without interruption, is an enigmatic and deeply personal work dedicated to the memory of the composer’s wife. For all its questioning and complex inner references, the Tenth Quartet is among the most immediately appealing of his later works. By this stage in his life, Shostakovich’s music tended to speak in a quieter voice and to a more intimate audience.