Aug. 22: Telegraph Quartet Announces Edge of the Storm – New Album on Azica Records
The Telegraph Quartet Announces New Album on Azica Records
20th Century Vantage Points Volume 2: Edge of the Storm
Music From the World War II Years by Bacewicz, Britten, Weinberg
Worldwide Release: August 22, 2025
“precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication” – The Strad
Downloads and CDs available to press on request
The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) announces its new album, Edge of the Storm, to be released on August 22, 2025 on Azica Records. Edge of the Storm follows the Telegraph Quartet's acclaimed 2023 album Divergent Paths as the second volume in its 20th-Century Vantage Points series. Where the first volume featuring the quartets of Ravel and Schoenberg explored the century's opening decade of unbridled creativity, this new installment examines the turbulent years of war and its aftermath from 1941-1951 through string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg.
On Edge of the Storm, the Telegraph delves into the brief but historically significant ten-year period of 1941-51. As Kai Christiansen writes in the liner notes, “Each composer featured on the album lived a unique wartime life that unmistakably influenced their equally unique quartet masterworks of the period.” Together, these quartets form a powerful triptych of wartime experience: Britten's exile and displacement, Weinberg's direct confrontation with genocide and loss, and Bacewicz's emergence from underground resistance into post-war renewal. Each composer's unique response to this defining historical moment creates a cohesive artistic statement about creativity's persistence through one of humanity's darkest periods.
Grażyna Bacewicz's String Quartet No. 4 (1951) emerges from the cautiously hopeful aftermath of war. During the German occupation, Bacewicz was part of the Underground Union of Musicians that sustained Polish musical life. After her family fled following the Warsaw uprising, she completed this quartet as a work commissioned by the Underground Union. It became an immediate success, capturing both the trauma and resilience of the post-war period.
Benjamin Britten's String Quartet No. 1 (1941) was written early in the war while Britten lived in exile as a conscientious objector. Having sailed to America in 1939 with Peter Pears both because of the war and for new opportunities as a composer, Britten wrote this "American" work while processing his displacement and the unfolding global tragedy. Some of the quartet's textures and moods foreshadow his later opera Peter Grimes, born from discoveries made during this pivotal wartime period.
Mieczysław Weinberg's String Quartet No. 6 (1946) represents perhaps the most direct artistic response to wartime trauma. Written just after the war's end, it processes Weinberg's devastating personal losses – the disappearance of his parents and sister (who he later learned were murdered at Trawniki concentration camp), his father-in-law "disappeared" in Stalin's purges. The composer himself declared: “Many of my works are related to the theme of war... I regard it as my moral duty to write about the war, about the horrors that befell mankind.” Weinberg’s sixth quartet was deemed "not recommended for publication" by Soviet authorities and remained unperformed for 60 years until its 2006 premiere by the Quatuor Danel. The Telegraph Quartet was coached on the piece by Quatuor Danel's second violinist Gilles Millet in 2019.
This powerful exploration of music born from conflict continues the Telegraph Quartet's compelling discography, which in addition to 2023’s Divergent Paths, also includes the group’s full length debut, Into the Light, featuring a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten. Strings Magazine described the Telegraph Quartet’s performance of Britten's Three Divertimenti as “sparkl[ing] with brilliant humor,” calling the full recording an “exciting new disc.” AllMusic describes the ensemble as an “adventurous group,” stating that Into the Light “[put] the Telegraph Quartet on the map.”
Celebrated by the San Francisco Chronicle as having “soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail,” and seen as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape," the Telegraph Quartet’s sophisticated blend of meticulous technicality and emotive chemistry has led the group to connect with audiences from all walks of life, bringing their memorable musicality to concert halls, classrooms, and vineyards alike.
Telegraph Quartet: Edge of the Storm
20th Century Vantage Points, Vol. 2
Release Date: August 22, 2025 | Azica Records
[1-3] Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969): String Quartet No. 4 (1951) [19:51]
[1] I. Andante-Allegro moderato [9:06]
[2] II. Andante [4:59]
[3] III. Allegro giocoso [5:46]
[4-7] Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): String Quartet No. 1, Op. 25 in D major (1941) [26:07]
[4] I. Andante sostenuto-Allegro vivo [9:16]
[5] II. Allegretto con slancio [3:04]
[6] III. Andante calmo [9:49]
[7] IV. Molto vivace [3:58]
[8-13] Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996): String Quartet No. 6, Op. 35 in E minor (1946) [30:45]
[8] I. Allegro semplice [6:35]
[9] II. Presto agitato - attacca [2:31]
[10] III. Allegro con fuoco - attacca [1:48]
[11] IV. Adagio [7:40]
[12] V. Moderato commodo [5:25]
[13] VI. Andante maestoso [6:46]
[Total Time: 76:43]
Recorded and Produced by Alan Bise
Cover image: Twilight | Wassily Kandinsky | Used by permission
Graphic Design: Monica Mussulin ©2025 Azica Records
Published by Azica Records 2025
About the Telegraph Quartet: The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.
Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.
Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.