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San Francisco Classical Voice

Nostalgia and New Visions From the Arneis

Playing something beautiful is an elusive enough quest for a quartet. Trying to say something new, through either historical or contemporary repertoire, is an additional challenge. “Sounds From the Past” showed four players wrestling with many of the same questions as their peers in pursuit of both these goals. The Arneis Quartet has more than proven itself a capable ensemble in both these arenas.

The Boston Globe

The Arneis Quartet flowers at MIT

Distinguishing one instrument from another was nearly impossible; when I closed my eyes, the music seemed to be rising up and ringing from all around. I will remember that feeling for a long time.

The Boston Globe

The Ticket: What’s happening in the local arts world

This Boston-based ensemble presents an all-American evening, including Ruth Crawford Seeger’s serialist String Quartet (1931) as well as works by Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty members John Harbison and Elena Ruehr.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Britten’s Pure Admiration for Purcell

The Arneis Quartet ably met Britten’s demands for the expressive possibilities of the quartet medium. Doña also wrote the very lucid, erudite program notes.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Getting a Head Start on Leipzig Week

The Arneis Quartet was augmented by guest violist Joan Ellersick. The opening Allegro con moto came forth with an easy rapport from the start, and the composer used the extra viola as an independent voice as well as to add subtle extra mid-range richness.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Wordless Poetry, Singerless Song

[Braun's] solos as first showed a care and intensity to her craft, forceful enough to take control of the quartet but not overpowering, passionate and aggressive but not overbearing. It was wonderful to hear this realization of the modern principle of equally distributing material throughout the quartet landscape, letting a skilled hand to show her musicianship. The others did fantastically with the far more limited material given to them, making each instrument sound like an individual rather than a support mechanism.

WBUR

Literary And Musical Circles Mix Things Up For Allen Ginsberg In A New Late-Night Series

Kravitz and the Arneis have been collaborating on a similar concert program for several years now, one that grew out the poetry of another American iconoclast, Walt Whitman (who figures prominently as a character in “Supermarket”).

The Boston Globe

The Ticket: Music, theater, dance, art, and more

The young Boston-based foursome visits the North Shore for performances of Janacek’s First Quartet (“Kreutzer Sonata”) and Schubert’s String Quintet, the latter with cellist Erin Ellis.

Fanfare Magazine

Reviews of 'John H Wallace: Pale Reflections'

The performance side of this album is expertly handled by the Arneis Quartet, three of whose members play in the highly esteemed Emmanuel Music orchestra in Boston. Ensemble, tone, and atmosphere could hardly be improved.

Fanfare Magazine

Reviews of 'John H Wallace: Pale Reflections'

This is mesmerizing music, superbly rendered by the Arneis Quartet and their colleagues

Fanfare Magazine

Reviews of 'John H Wallace: Pale Reflections'

This is a remarkably crafted performance from the Arneis Quartet and Victor Carres. The intensity of the nine-minute first movement is perfectly carried through; for the second movement, strings are pizzicato throughout and the piano adds the most delicate, almost music box contributions.

The Boston Muscial Intelligencer

Mendelssohn Beyond the Facile

The challenge for performers when taking [the works of Mendelssohn] on is to make music out of all that craftsmanship. The Arneis Quartet was able to accomplish this brilliantly...

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Musical Connections to T. S. Eliot

In this unfamiliar repertoire, what stood out was their versatility and balance. As realized in the over-brightly lighted Morse Auditorium, the former Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue, their sound had a dark but soft-edged quality in the Berger; the List brought out more muscular, even violent, emotions, still expressed with a round and focused tone. The fifth movement of the List showed off a keen sense of individual voice, as the ear could perceive each independent line clearly enough that the brain had to race to try to make sense of each one separately.

Three Blind Mice with a College Education

Arneis Quartet at BU’s Morse Auditorium–March 31, 2015

As the concert drew to a close, the logic of the programming sank in—with a first half so sublimely played and a second half so intriguing, the pairing was ultimately very satisfying, the excitement remaining days later.

The Boston Globe

Ticket: classical music

The Arneis Quartet and colleagues... investigate the links between T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and the works of Beethoven and Sofia Gubaidulina

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Mendelssohn and Wolf Seeking Connections

Near the end, a more extended fragment of “Frage” is quoted, and if the song’s text doesn’t provide a definitively affirmative answer, Mendelssohn’s music did in the Arneis’s compelling performance.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Crisp Yet Full-bodied Blend from Arneis

The Arneis String Quartet seems to have chosen its name well. The Arneis grape has traditionally been used to blend with harsher wines to soften them, but on its own, the wine it produces is a crisp, full-bodied white, with floral and fruit notes, according to aficionados. So it is with the sound this quartet produces. No single member stands out; each rather brings his own voice to the whole, and the blend is singularly beautiful: sweet but with the sweetness of clear water— not at all cloying.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Liquid Gold from Arneis

The Arneis Quartet is doing everything right...as a relatively young quartet, they have already achieved something it often takes years to develop: a unique, collective sound which is as warm and full of sparkle as liquid gold.

Gramophone

RUEHR ‘Icarus’ and other chamber music

Insect Dances was written for the Arneis Quartet, whose vivacious rendition concludes the disc.