"An excellent concert by the Fine Arts Quartet...These four musicians played as a seasoned quartet. Blend was excellent...The Fine Arts Quartet showed the range of their warmly sympathetic treatment of the literature."
(New Haven Journal-Courier)
Austin
"The Fine Arts Quartet (received) a standing ovation for an impeccably tailored recital...This ensemble's sound has the smooth, mature patina of well-worn kid leather...The end effect was one of comfortable beauty."
(Austin American-Statesman)
Kalamazoo
"FINE ARTS QUARTET EXCELS AT THE CIVIC (headline)...A musical golden glow suffuses all that the ensemble plays so that a masked, or burnished quality cushions each note...This group performs all kinds of music so beautifully... that few ultimately can resist. Thursday's concert proved an exciting and glorious evening of music on its own terms."
(Kalamazoo Gazette)
Edmonton
"QUARTET SHOWS BRILLIANCE (headline)...Consummate artistry by the Fine Arts Quartet."
(The Edmonton Journal)
Providence
"FINE ARTS QUARTET SHOWS SILKY REFINEMENT (headline)...This is a fine-honed ensemble, up there with the very best...There was a kind of unhurried ease about their playing, a mellowness that allowed one to savor the music...For all its grandeur, this was also a remarkably refined performance."
(The Providence Journal-Bulletin)
Lexington
"With its highly polished ensemble technique, its refined and understated interpretations, its finely regulated tonal balance, the Fine Arts Quartet showed what fine chamber playing is all about."
(Lexington Herald-Leader)
Portland, OR
"The Fine Arts Quartet opened the 50th season of Friends of Chamber Music with a concert that was fresh and invigorating...illustrating the strengths of quartet playing: cohesiveness, technical aplomb and unity of sound and musical style... The Fine Arts Quartet played with enormous refinement, creating sound textures that were so vivid, they seemed almost tactile."
(The Oregonian, Portland)
Corpus Christi
"These remarkable musicians...played Schubert, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky as though these composers and their extremely challenging music were old friends. And were the composers to hear this captivating ensemble, these friendships would, no doubt, have deepened."
(Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
Waterloo
"FINE ARTS QUARTET CONCERT IS MARVELOUS EXPERIENCE (headline)...The Quartet gave the scores their own interpretive signature."
(Waterloo Courier, Iowa)
Columbus, OH
"The Fine Arts Quartet is carrying on a tradition of superior music-making. Saturday's performance satisfied even the pickiest chamber music fanatic."
(Columbus Dispatch, Ohio)
Worcester
"The Fine Arts Quartet presented a beautiful program of chamber music... Worcester Art Museum was filled with an afternoon of stringed virtuosity."
(Worcester Evening Gazette)
Bloomington (Indiana University)
"FINE ARTS QUARTET TRANSCENDS IN PERFORMANCE (headline)...Sitting down at the typewriter to summarize the impressions left after hearing the final two concerts by the Fine Arts Quartet in its 1999 summer series, one recalls, first of all, the total: a fabric of tonal luster and richness of weave... The just-completed set of Fine Arts Quartet concerts was outstanding, as rewarding a package as the group ever left behind...Most of all, I'll remember the nobility, the spirituality, the melodic beauties of those first two movements in Schubert's C Major Quintet. The reading by the Fine Arts was profoundly moving."
(Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana)
Bloomington (Indiana University)
"The Fine Arts Quartet performed a spectacular program to an electrified full house...Next summer's Bloomington engagement of the Fine Arts Quartet can be anticipated as an event to be savored."
(Bloomington Herald Telephone)
Paris
"In 50 years of existence, the Fine Arts Quartet still shows their traditionally silky sonority in fine, seamless and agile readings."
(Le Monde, Paris)
Geneva
"Among today's excellent chamber music ensembles, the Fine Arts Quartet is in the first rank. The pleasure of listening is pure enchantment."
(La Suisse, Geneva)
Berlin
"A thrilling concert of chamber music was performed by the Fine Arts Quartet. The four musicians conveyed the highest level of performance and musical poetry."
(Morgenpost, Berlin)
San Francisco
"Few ensembles can reach the level of the Fine Arts Quartet for the closely matched intensity of playing, to say nothing of the lyric gleam of the tone. There was not one hint of the gangbusters aggressiveness that has become popular with some ensembles. It was just beautiful playing through and through... As for the Ravel, its destiny could have been to have been placed in the hands of the Fine Arts Quartet, who played it with the exuberance as well as the gracefulness that are inherent in this ardent work...An ensemble of lyric purity, the Fine Arts Quartet takes a back seat to none."
(San Francisco Chronicle)
Edinburgh
"The Quartet No.2 of Borodin opened with such tenderness that one wondered if one had ever really listened to this piece properly before. What has always been considered a musical lollipop became in these hands, a highly sophisticated confection."
(The Scotsman, Edinburgh)
Chicago
"Their style is elegant and polished...their intonation remarkably clean."
(Chicago Tribune)
Chicago
"My thoughts went back to the old long vanished Budapest Quartet...Here was the same richness of sound, the well-remembered warmth, the typical Central European mixture of lyricism and wit. This was an uncommonly fine example of chamber music."
(Chicago Sun-Times)