The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam embarks on a traversal of three String Quartets by Tchaikovsky. This is the first of two volumes containing String Quartets 1 & 2.

The circles in which Tchaikovsky and Brahms lived have a lot in common; it feels like a logical step in their artistic evolution. Even more so than Brahms, however, Tchaikovsky is also public property: in addition to the innumerable amount of recordings and performances of Eugene Onegin, the First Piano Concerto and the Andante cantabile, the appropriations of ‘The Brand of Tchaikovsky’ pour over one another.

Writer, lawyer and philosopher Maxim Februari writes an essay at the request of the Dudoks, exploring how one could relate to Tchaikovsky in the 21st century. Quoting from Everything changes and Tchaikovsky changes along with it: ‘Like the audience later in the concert hall, the quartet has to reconcile these temporalities and eternities, give gravity to lightness and bring lightness to gravity. And all that preferably without being too pretentious. That’s quite a task.’