riveting ... unforgettable ... beyond perfection

San Diego Times Union

...in the St Petersburg quartet we surely have the natural successors to the Borodin's crown

Sunday Times

...in the Second Quartet, the benchmark comparison with the Borodin Quartet on Teldec invariably favours the St Petersburg

BBC Music Magazine March 2001

With this third instalment of their Shostakovich cycle, the St Petersburg Quartet pursue the same lucid expression as before, and those possessing the earlier volumes (including the finest recent Second Quartet) can invest with confidence.

International Record Review

The Leningrad-trained St Petersburg Quartet …..are certainly a force to be reckoned with……..Although the technique of these players is drilled to be capable of achieving near perfection, they never opt for mere beauty of tone. There's a sense here of trying to recreate that something beyond, to which the composer was striving - rather than what lies achieved on the page.

The Times

Flawless ensemble...stylish, supple, openhearted performances

New York times

Astonishing sophistication and self-confidence

Washington Post

Honoured, prized and admired....the St Petersburg String Quartet continues to extend its influence....their probing of substantive musical matters yields genuine depth

Los Angeles Times

Best CD of the Month....Great lucidity, fine ensemble, and passionate insight

Stereo Review

Saturday's was a Christmas dinner of a menu at Birmingham Chamber Music Society, crammed with riches enough to garnish three separate concerts.
Each of the works on offer from the much-respected St Petersburg String Quartet was a lynchpin of the repertoire, and each would have been enough to climax any programme. Interestingly, there were hidden links between them, welding them into one satisfying if gormandising unity.
Haydn's C major Quartet, the famous Emperor, revealed these players' full, bright sound and well-defined articulation. In this strongly-drawn reading the variations on the melody which later became the German national anthem were suavely, meltingly conveyed, but one wonders how these musicians feel at expending so much love on an artefact which became the symbol of such cruel oppression of their city during World War 11.
Russian horror at Allied destruction (of Dresden) is expressed in the harrowing Eighth Quartet of Shostakovich. This desolate journey of the soul began chillingly vibrato-less here, telepathy between the players permitting the slightest nudges forward or holdings back to shape the phrases, and to allow some of the central movements to he taken at a tremendous lick.

Birmingham Post