‘This is a superb disc’ (American Record Guide)

‘These are estimable performances, full of meaningful details and engaging atmosphere … a safe and rewarding continuation of the cycle’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘Extraordinary intensity and depth’ (Los Angeles Times)

‘These readings warrant strong commendation … excellent performances’ (Classic CD)

‘An edge-of-the-seat experience as this Russian quartet hurls itself headlong into the scores … deserves an emphatic recommendation and makes one impatient for the ensemble's next Shostakovich disc’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘It is high time that a younger generation of Russian string players should tackle this key oeuvre of 20th-century chamber music, and in the St Petersburg Quartet we surely have the natural successors to the Borodin's crown. These virtuosic and sumptuous-toned accounts of the A and F major quartets easily rival the quasi-orchestral sonority the older quartet brought to this music and they are no less adept at mining the profound melancholy that pervades Shostakovich's great, lamenting slow movements and the mordant, sardonic wit of his parodistic waltzes and scherzos. A dazzling debut’ (The Sunday Times)

‘One of the finest chamber recordings of any genre I've heard all year and one that catches the idiom of the music in near-definitive terms. Superbly played and engineered, it's a magnificent beginning to what promises to be a must-hear series’ (The Independent on Sunday)

‘The St Petersburg turns in a performance of winning directness full of colour and contrast’ (Gramophone)

‘The players respond with performances of total concentration, thoughtful refinement and rapt intensity, making their readings very special indeed’ (The Scotsman)

‘The virtues in the St Petersburg Quartet's Shostakovich are as evident here as in the first volume of their complete cycle. Once again it's not so much the technical excellence of their full-blooded playing that really strikes home as their ability to project the subtext that lies beneath the notes. Its performance is full of revelatory nuances’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘These are among the great interpretations that have been placed on disc’ (Fanfare, USA)

'All central to the repertoire irrespective of other associations, these works nevertheless make powerful extramusical statements. The Fourth (1949) embraces Jewish inflections in the face of rising Soviet anti-semitism; the Eighth (1960), a reflection on the Dresden bombing, is also a disillusioned Shostakovich's memorial to himself; and the 11th (1966) touchingly memorialises Vasily Shirinsky, violinist of the Beethoven Quartet. The performances are both polished and passionate' (The Sunday Times)