Press

San Francisco Classical Voice

Telegraph Quartet Sheds Light on Music of Dark Times with Edge of the Storm

Here, as in all the vibrant performances on this creatively curated and extensively annotated disc, the Telegraph Quartet (supported by excellent sound engineering) plays with commitment, distinction, and finely disciplined passion.

Cultural Attaché

Telegraph Quartet plays all three works beautifully. They never try to make these pieces anything more than what they are: intensely personal responses to a world at war with devastating personal consequences.

The Strad

Virtuosity is consummate: expressively full one second, lean the next, with the players bending in the wind of Ravel’s quixotically shifting sonorities.

The Strad

The players are alert to the music’s emotional power and extreme dynamics, creating an exceptionally varied narrative.

San Francisco Chronicle

Just five years after forming, the Bay Area’s Telegraph Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of serious depth and versatility, and the group’s terrific debut recording only serves to reinforce that judgment. The programming – a collection of comparatively little-known works by Webern, Britten and the late American modernist Leon Kirchner – bespeaks a wonderful boldness of spirit, and the performances, which are vibrant and full of exploratory fervor, follow through beautifully.

Strings

Here, the Telegraph Quartet’s interpretation sparkles with brilliant humor, balancing out the seriousness of the other works as they bring this exciting new disc to a close.

San Francisco Classical Voice

Telegraph Quartet Dazzles Listeners with Into the Light

The perfectly crafted unity of their playing, as in the vivid triplets that begin Kirchner’s First Quartet, is as striking as are the smashing pizzicato notes and electrically sparking ponticello that enliven the whole disc.

BBC Music Magazine

The turbulent, destabilising and demoralising impact of the Second World War hovers uneasily over the three quartets in this enterprising and thought-provoking release... The Telegraph Quartet interpret [Britten's First Quartet] with poise. Their accounts of the war-scarred second and fourth movements are technically brilliant and ferociously articulated.

Audiophile Audition

This is a compelling music, and the Telegraph Quartet’s rhythmic acuity, rapid tempos and intense lyricism is stunning…The Telegraph Quartet is yet another brilliant young string quartet that makes chamber music so vital in today’s classical music performances. This disc showcases three unfamiliar 20th century works that modern quartet explorers will savor.

The Whole Note

Like five epigrammatic character pieces from outer space, they conjure eerie landscapes, fantastic atmospheres as well as ineffable inner spaces. The Telegraph Quartet’s realization of these ‘jewels’ (Stravinsky) is crystalline and thoroughly engrossing.

San Francisco Chronicle

Just five years after forming, the Bay Area’s Telegraph Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of serious depth and versatility, and the group’s terrific debut recording only serves to reinforce that judgment. The programming – a collection of comparatively little-known works by Webern, Britten and the late American modernist Leon Kirchner – bespeaks a wonderful boldness of spirit, and the performances, which are vibrant and full of exploratory fervor, follow through beautifully.

New Music Buff

All the works here are bound to please a concert audience and this little collection of works dating a forty year period from 1909 to 1949 are excellent vehicles for this ensemble which sports a lush sound and a feeling for the proper shaping of melodies.

Arts Fuse

...the Telegraph’s performance and recording of the [Schoenberg] is top-notch. Theirs is a reading that doesn’t once lack for purpose, momentum, or color.

The New York Times

Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful.

The Strad

Now quartet-in-residence with the University of Michigan, the ensemble – violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw – approaches this music not simply as historical document, but as a living challenge to engage with the past.

Texura

Telegraph Quartet is showing itself to be one of the most exciting string quartets of our time.

The New York Times

Nimble and cohesive, the Telegraph Quartet plays these works with utter conviction, revealing music that, haunted by destruction, insists on forward motion.