From Desert Morning News

Beethoven's music has always been at the core of the Shanghai String Quartet's repertoire ? as it is for any quartet of any repute. But especially recently, Beethoven's quartets have played a significant role for the Shanghai. The group has given several performances of the complete quartet cycle in the United States and Europe. In China, birthplace to three of the quartet's members ? violinists Weigang Li and Yi-Wen Jiang and violist Honggang Li; cellist Nicholas Tzavaras is a native New Yorker ? the ensemble's performances of the complete cycle included the local premiere of several of the late quartets. The Shanghai made a return visit to SaltLake City Tuesday, playing ? not unexpectedly ? an all-Beethoven program that featured a quartet from each of the composer's three stylistic periods. The members of the Shanghai are exceptional musicians. They are technically astute and musically compelling. They play with radiant expressiveness and lyricism that brings depth and a finely honed perceptiveness to the music. At Tuesday's concert, they showed why they are one of today's finest and most sought-after quartets. They opened their program with the F major Quartet, op. 18, No. 1. The work has classical proportions and a late 18th-century melodic and harmonic language. But it already presages the idiomatic writing of the more mature composer in its expressive content and wider emotional range. The foursome captured the work's idiosyncracies stunningly. Particularly notable was the reading of the slow movement, which plumbs the depths of pathos. Their interpretation was wonderfully lucid and thoughtful. After the F major, the Shanghai gave a dynamic reading of the so-called "Serioso" Quartet in F minor, op. 95, capturing the work's dark lyricism, poignancy and somber character with an earnestness that was expressive and forceful. Closing out the concert was an illuminating reading of the C sharp minor Quartet, op. 131. From the eloquent opening fugue to the fiery finale, the Shanghai's performance was poetic and enlightened.

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