Press
"There was warmth in the Afiara's reading. There was nuance. There was fidelity to the variety of impressions Beethoven built into this powerful score. The performance had impact."
The Bloomington Herald Times (Beethoven concert review)
July 6, 2012
"Moments of sheer transcendent beauty abounded from both the music and the musicians."
Seen and Heard International (Montreal Chamber Music Festival review)
January 22, 2012
"The second movement evokes the same Viennese lyricism as Beethoven's Scene by the Brook in the Pastorale Symphony. It was played tenderly and with delicate care. The third featured potent rhythms, played with taut precision. The finale brought the performance to a stirring conclusion, a whirling dance of melody with a tinge of Hungarian folksiness that looks forward to Brahms."
Paul Pelkonin, Superconductor (Montreal Chamber Music Festival review)
January 21, 2012
May 13, 2011
The Montreal Gazette (Beethoven String Quartet Cycle, Montreal Chamber Music Festival)
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"The Afiara brought intensity and commitment, and displayed why they took home second place along with the Szekely Prize for the best interpretation of Beethoven at the 2010 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The secret to Beethoven's quartets is really in the inner slow movements where the listener can be transported to quite another world... And it is at these movements where the Afiara excelled."
September 25, 2011
New York Times (Buster Keaton‘s "Sherlock, Jr.")
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"On Saturday night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center the mystique of the silent-film era was recreated (and musically updated) with a screening of Buster Keaton's 1924 comedy "Sherlock, Jr." accompanied by a live performance of a jazzy, eclectic and inventive score for piano and string quartet composed by Stephen Prutsman. Mr. Prutsman played the piano, joined by the Afiara String Quartet, the former graduate resident quartet at the Juilliard School, whose game young members doubled on kazoos, clackers and toy instruments. This was the New York premiere of the 2006 score, and the hall was packed... The Afiara players and Mr. Prutsman received a hearty ovation for their vibrant performance."
April 6, 2011
The Georgia Straight (Music in the Morning, Vancouver Academy of Music)
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"Even more impressive, in its way, was the quartet's reading of Franz Joseph Haydn's much earlier Quartet in D Major, Opus 76, No. 5... The slower, more rhythmically free passages-the kind in which young quartets can easily go off the rails-displayed the group's remarkable sonic blend and heartbeat-synced ensemble attack."
July 14, 2010
Laurence Vittes for Audiophile Audition (CD Review, Mendelssohn, Schubert)
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"The young award-winning Afiaras play Mendelssohn's A Minor Quartet like compassionate angels. Their phrasing is broad and yet their tone is ineffably sweet because of the tone pattern they feature."