The Kopelman String Quartet , which gave a thrilling concert on Tuesday night at Kilbourn Hall, is a kind of classical music all-star team - its players are all former members of some of the world's most prestigious ensembles.... phenomenal Russian ensemble... Needless to say, the group lived up to its lofty reputation. It even surpassed it.
Democratic and Chronicle, Rochester

SZYMANOWSKI QUARTET

Frick Collection
It was hard not to fall in love with the Szymanowski Quartet at the Frick Collection on Sunday afternoon. All professionals perform with intensity, but playing from the heart is another matter. The sound was unusually warm, filling this small space to capacity. ... Haydn’s Quartet in G (Op. 77) had the requisite wit and clear definition, but the listener also felt the earth under Haydn’s feet, reminding us of his modest origins. .. [Shostakovich's 8th] quartet is one of the saddest stories ever told, and the Szymanowski players made sure that its concluding slow movements broke our hearts...These good patriots also played their namesake’s Nocturne and Tarantella. Szymanowski in 1915 seemed to be wavering between the forthright, common-man sensibilities of a Dvorak or a Smetana and the fluttering, gauzy textures and vague dissonances of the Impressionist movement.
New York Times, March 2008

[reviewing CD AV2092] What a musically and acoustically satisfying disc is this - I had to stop being a critic and just listen! The first of my SACD recommendations for Best of the Year!
Audiophile Audition, 2006

What have I been doing for the past nine years to have missed the rise of the Szymanowski Quartet? ... Their intonation and blend are impeccable. They don't so much bow the strings as brush them with silk, or so it sounds. And they seem t play with one heart, one mind, one purpose.

What's more, they relish a challenge, as they showed in this stunning recital to launch the City of London Festival. they opened with Haydn's Sunrise quartet, which was sublime from its vibrato-less opening through the solemn stillness of the slow movement to the sense of mystery evoked in the modal-tinged Trio of the Minuet. And though the music was very different, Bartok's magnificently fierce Third Quartet was delivered with a similar nobility, as well as tremendous precision.

To place a new work between these masterpieces was to measure it against giants. Yes, extraordinary as it may seem, Deirdre Gribbin's What the Whaleship Saw seemed every bit as mesmerising a the Haydn and Bartok. In part that was due to the Szymanowski's performance. Rarely can a new quartet making such technical and expressive demands have been premiered with such assurance.
The Times, June 2004

Szymanowski Quartet showed just why they have gained a reputation as one of the most charismatic quartets of their generation, with playing of the highest calibre and string colours that were simply ravishing... This {Bartok no 3] was a performance of astonishing intensity... Whooping and cheering isn't the automatic response to Brahms's chamber music. But it was to this.
The Guardian, June 2003

This Warsaw foursome has superb technical control, innate musicality and an extraordinary sense of ensemble. Couple that with a deep understanding of their repertoire and an involvement that communicates itself electrifyingly to an audience and the Szymanowski Quartet bears the hallmark of greatness.

The quartet captured all of the work's [Szymanowski no 2] peculiar beauty, revelling in the Polish rhythms and inflected harmonies of the Scherzo second movement. The third movement - a brilliantly sophisticated fugue - summed up Gavin Bantock;s description of music as "mathematics falling into water majestically": it was a reading of stunning control and dynamic flexibility, of clarity, intelligence and huge commitment.... Watch this space. I guarantee you will be hearing a lot more from this gifted young group.
The Strad

TRIO WANDERER

A chamber concert of exceptional quality ... a panorama of expressive musicality that leaves the listener right on the edge of his seat. ... bare of sentimentality, but with enough softness, the right touch of melodrama or brilliant impetus.
With each piece the "Trio Wanderer" found its own language and its own clear style. Their performance discipline is fascinating. The way the musicians draw different lines, the degree of intensity, the regulation of dynamics, how they emphasize or permit different voices to get through while consciously taking into account the consequences to the collective sound, and, above all, how they bestow the music with its individual breath: a sheer miracle.
Salzburg Festival /Salzburger Nachrichten, August 2004

Such fusion of spirit and style is hard to find in a trio. All three artists contribute to the trio's perfect homogeneity. Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian's violin is superb, Raphaël Pidoux's cello sings freely and Vincent Coq's piano is faultlessly well-rounded and almost symphonic. The Trio stand out immediately for their fullness of sound, power and youthful energy. 
Diapason (France)

It was clear from the outset that the Trio Wanderer's recital at the Wigmore Hall was to be very special. That no other artist that month came close to capturing the essence of music as this young French group did speaks volumes for the quality of its performances … They have a near-telepathic musical sensibility … What so impresses about this group is its command of the emotional panorama of the music ...In short, an awe-inspiring evening. 
The Strad (London)

Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian is a wonderful violinist, elegant, sober - a born virtuoso. Raphaël Pidoux is a superb cellist with deeply moving and truly lyrical accents. As for Vincent Coq, he at once exhibits total musicality and breathtaking technical skills: three partners whose hearts have been keeping the same beat for eleven years. 
Le Figaro (France)

This CD (Ravel / Chausson) is an outstanding addition to the catalog, for it features two great French trios performed by a French trio in ways that evoke long-lost French style. Technically brilliant, they also have the gift of finding "the music behind the notes". 
Fanfare (USA)

Breathtakingly beautiful performances of breathtakingly beautiful music 
Classics Today, July 2005

AVIV QUARTET

A discovery: The Aviv Quartet with Shostakovich and Mozart
The young Aviv- Quartet from Israel replaced, due to sickness, the oldest functioning quartet-Borodin Quartet- at the Zurich Festival. It was a discovery for those who found their way to the Tonhalle Zürich on Friday evening despite the unknown name. What a range of colour these four developed from a score which marks only the very essence and denies all opulence. How exactly (and well balanced) they make use of these colours to define with absolute precision the structure and emotion. How tastefully they search for the drama hidden in the musical score. How wonderfully they allow time to flow through their whole ensemble. And how perfect is the intonation.

In the F-Major Quartet they show with overwhelming freshness the composers' sarcasm, his affinity to the grotesque, the double meanings. With their very precise interpretation of this piece Sergei Ostrovsky, Evgenia Epstein, Shuli Waterman and Rachel Mercer let us experience a new and modern Shostakovich. But also in Mozart: they approached the E-flat Major Quartet very respectfully; every single note of the score was analysed as to its meaning in the whole work. The result was an intelligent, well thought-out reading by the Aviv Quartet; the various states of suspense were shown beautifully, with a very special intensity. We surely will hear a lot more of this ensemble.
Alfred Zimmerlin, Neu Züricher Zeitung July 3, 2006
Zürcher Festspiele / Zurich Festival  

The young Aviv Quartet won accolades for its Shostakovich cycle at Wigmore Hall in January, when its distinctive precision and eager intelligence suggested to London audiences that here already were wise heads on young shoulders. Especially admired was its playing of Shostakovich's Ninth Quartet (1964) - already included on its first disc in this cycle. The Tenth Quartet op.118 dates from the same year, and receives here an admirably crisp, lucid reading (the Allegretto furioso is splendidly driven)... all four play with absolute commitment and conviction.

Other works also emerge well, notably a superbly affecting reading of the agonised, single-movement Quartet no.13 op.138 (1970), beautifully introduced by Shuli Waterman's strikingly evocative viola. This gripping performance shows clearly why so many have raved about the Aviv, and built up high expectations of it.

These charming Israeli and Canadian performers reveal many rich layers in the profoundly involving Fourth Quartet. It's exciting to see a gifted, patently youthful ensemble emerging in chamber music, and many will take pleasure in that alone… But these blithe young performers of the future deserve a hearty welcome.
Roderic Dunnett, The Strad, June 2006

There was a natural, collective boldness with the Aviv that never sought to trumpet itself. In one listening the players practically became Shostakovich specialists.
Edward Bhesania, The Strad, April 2006

If winter is here, can spring be far behind? Not if you're in the presence of the Aviv Quartet: there's fresh, rising sap in everything they play. Although they have been together for only five years, these young players are keeping alive a distinctively Russian-Jewish tradition of playing, while also re-energising it with a character very much their own. Shostakovich is, not surprisingly, close to their hearts... they should be snapped up by any company eager to add a new Shostakovich cycle to the catalogue.

This was a remarkably mature performance of a rich and mature work. The Aviv Quartet fuse high-fibre playing with a fine sense of melodic melancholy which goes straight to the heart of Shostakovich. They also have a firm grip on the form of this ever-shifting, single-movement work.

Already in their Beethoven and Schumann before the interval, it was apparent that the heart of this ensemble beats very much at its centre. Shuli Waterman's robust viola and Evgenia Epshtein's second violin give a sinewy core to the quartet - and nowhere more thrillingly than in the second slow section of Shostakovich's Ninth, where these two voices led the way in the lacerating pizzicato before the anguished violin recitative by Sergey Ostrovsky.

This is certainly an ensemble of strong individual characters. With the poised and finely drawn cello playing of Rachel Mercer, these voices create a tough network of responses which sets up some real challenges for both the players themselves and for their audience.

This was clear from the start of their recital, when Beethoven's Quartet No 11, Op 95, the Quartetto serioso, lived up to its name in being seriously fierce, seriously feisty and seriously fast.

Again, the sheer strength of those inner voices gave biting attack to every entry, a keen edge to every chord. The old-style sweetness of Ostrovsky's leading violin silvered the breaths of melody within the bustle of the opening allegro. A sense of physical struggle toughened the raw humour of the finale.
Hilary Finch, The Times, January 2004

ARONOWITZ ENSEMBLE

Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham, Thursday July 19, 2007

The rain couldn't dampen the impact of this recital by Radio 3 New Generation artists. In the two song cycles of Ivor Gurney and Ralph Vaughan Williams, which set words from AE Housman's A Shropshire Lad, it is the scything down of young men in the Boer war that shatters the idyll of the English countryside; the sensibility of these performers to the anguish expressed in the music was acute.

The passion which the Aronowitz brought to Elgar's Piano Quintet in A minor equalled their finesse in the song cycles, and if one player should be singled out it is Jennifer Strumm, whose viola solos had a warmth of tone worthy of the late Cecil Aronowitz, for whom the ensemble is named.·
The Guardian, 2007

The Aronowitz Ensemble, a string sextet and piano, owes its existence to the Aldeburgh festival. The players met at the festival three years ago and made their debut as a group a few months later. Now they are part of the BBC's New Generation Young Artists scheme, and they returned to Aldeburgh for a recital on the festival's final weekend.

Between Mahler's earliest surviving work, the A minor movement for piano quartet, and Mozart's E flat Piano Quartet K493, the Aronowitz's programme included the last of this year's premieres: the first European airing for Nicholas Maw's String Sextet, introduced at Lincoln Center, New York earlier this year ... The string writing is rich and sonorous; every theme is supported and carried on detailed textures that must be a delight to play. The Aronowitz clearly relished all of it - their playing was constantly expressive and raptly beautiful.
The Guardian, 2007

The latest chamber music series at the RSAMD, staged in conjunction with BBC Radio 3, focused on the works of Mendelssohn and his Danish contemporary, Niels Gade. They are composers with more in common than a coincidence of chronology; Mendelssohn championed his colleague's work and it was Gade who took over the position of chief conductor at the Leipzig Gewandhaus after the former's death. Bringing the series to a close, this lunchtime concert paired what are perhaps the composers' most comparable works: their string octets.

The performance was given by the Aronowitz Ensemble, a member of Radio 3's New Generation Artists scheme, a flexible chamber group founded by violinist Magnus Johnston and including his cellist younger brother Guy, a past winner of BBC Young Musician award. Here the string playing members of the ensemble were augmented by violinist Ken Aiso and violist Dmitri Murrath.

Though it doesn't equal the brilliance of Mendelssohn's Octet, the ensemble showed that Gade's work is worthy in its own right. There may be more than an influence of Mendelssohn in the vivacious opening movement and the playful scherzo, but the slow movement is original.

In a display of egalitarianism, the players swapped parts for the Mendelssohn, violinist Nadia Wijzenbeek's silvery tone contrasting with Johnston's more muscular playing in the Gade ...there was much to admire in the playing of a group of excellent performers who have what comes across as an instinctive ability to make music.
The Herald, 2008

On the Hyperion Records recording of Dover Beach, with Gerald Finley and Julius Drake Finley and Drake are impeccable (as are the Aronowitz Quartet in Dover Beach)
Gramophone, 2007