This year’s Quartet Week features six acclaimed ensembles who will explore a wide-ranging selection of works from the rich quartet repertoire in the Pierre Boulez Saal’s intimate setting. With celebrated masterpieces of the genre performed side by side with contemporary and recent pieces, the program reveals surprising connections and echoes across different styles and eras.

Shostakovich originally intended to compose a cycle of string quartets covering every key, as Bach had done in The Well-tempered Clavier. But in 1974, a year before his death, he expressed doubt he would even be able to hear the premiere of his 15th and ultimately last quartet: “Death surrounds me, taking one after the other, people close and dear to me”—among those who had passed away were the violist and cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, to whom Shostakovich dedicated his 13th and 14th Quartets. The Hagen Quartett performs these three late works as part of its season-long Shostakovich cycle.

Due to changes in the rehearsal schedule for their Shostakovich cycle that were caused by illness, the members of the Hagen Quartett decided to switch the programs of the last two concerts so that instead of the originally intended chronological order the String Quartets No. 13 to 15 are performed before Quartets No. 10 to 12.