Acclaim for Voxare

The performances, vivid and articulate, seize the attention. 

-Gramophone Magazine, August 2017  Read the full review

"The members of the Voxare Quartet give this music an impassioned reading."

-Nashville Scene, August 2016  Read the full review

"The members of Voxare are all classically trained, but they aren’t afraid to try new things, and this is what makes them so memorable – their ability to bring new sounds, new music, new culture to us [...] Voxare plays together. There’s an incredible balance to its musicality and its performance, as each musician allows the next to fully express him or herself." 

-Williams Record, November 2015 Read the full review

"Imagined Name, Imaginative Performances"

"I was immediately impressed with the sheer size of Voxare’s sound, huge and luxurious in quality."

-Boston Musical Inelligencer, July 2013  Read the full review

“The group jumps on its music with all fours and makes the tussle worth hearing.”

-Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2012   Read the full review

"The gifted Voxare String Quartet playing Barber's String Quartet...In its original version, the famous Adagio emerges as intimate, poignant and achingly direct, especially as played here by the Voxare Quartet with such penetrating tone and lucid textures. These four young musicians — Emily Ondracek-Peterson and Galina Zhdanova, violinists; Erik Peterson, violist; and Adrian Daurov, cellist — were students at the Juilliard School when they formed the quartet in 2008, and it is rising fast."

-New York Times, Sept 15, 2010  Read the full review

"The youthful Voxare has already made a big splash in the chamber music pool.  Getting to hear this up and coming group was a treat, as will be watching its star continue to rise."

-Virginia Gazette, September 12, 2012

"The personable and passionate Voxare players ...offered a spirited, high-energy performance, vividly conveying the work’s beautiful colors. The performance was excellent, with distinctive contributions from each player."

-New York Times, July 25, 2010  Read the full review

"The true inventiveness of the Voxare Quartet showed in the second movement ... The Voxare String Quartet has made its young career by taking the string quartet form beyond Haydn and the standard pieces and focusing on composers of the past and the living future. The quartet definitely brought a young and fresh sound to the Richardson stage, showing a new approach to both repertoire and musical style."

-Princeton University Concert Review, Princeton Town Topics, July 20, 2011 Read the full review

*Critic's Pick*

-Time Out New York Magazine, July 21, 2010

"Voxare String Quartet Stuns PAC Audience. The Voxare Quartet gave a thrilling display of technical skill and musicianship for the audience in the Performing Arts Center, Wednesday night."

-The Merciad, October 9, 2012  Read the full review

"The idea of a multicultural 'melting pot' provides an apt metaphor for the Voxare Quartet, an ensemble formed at the Juilliard School in 2007 and composed of two couples: violinist Emily Ondracek and violist Erik Peterson, both Chicago natives; and violinist Galina Zhdanova and cellist Adrian Daurov, both from Russia. In an all-Baroque programme at Bargemusic, any stylistic differences between the couples were scrupulously integrated. Joining violinist Mark Peskanov in Bach's A minor Concert, the quartet showed an awareness of period practice with fleet tempos, buoyant phrasing and crisp attacks. The group then endowed arrangements of three fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier with a wealth of colour and texture while maintaining the austerity of the composer's original vision.

Peskanov returned as the soloist in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Here, the ensemble turned up the voltage (and tempos) and first violinist Ondracek in particular revelled in the dazzling passagework of 'Winter.' Authentic Baroque playing this was not, but it made a rousing case on its own terms." 

-Strad Magazine, December 2009

"The Voxare String Quartet is probably the best American chamber group performing today."

-Ned Rorem

"In the first event the Voxare String Quartet accompanied a screening of “Man With a Movie Camera,” a 1929 silent documentary by the Soviet director Dziga Vertov. With rustic melodies made edgy through piquant harmonies, and in passages of turbulent mechanical chugging, the music neatly corresponded to Vertov’s jumpy barrage of images. The members of the quartet, seated in darkness to one side of the stage, played with precision and passion; Emily Ondracek-Peterson, the first violinist, provided elegant solo work."

-The New York Times, September 21, 2009  Read the full review

"The Voxare Quartet is half Russian, half Chicagoan, 100 percent Juilliardian and 400 percent young, enthusiastic, blessed with individual great instrumental skills."

-Concertonet, July 2009

"Some, including the composer himself, prefer Rorem's later string quartets to his Quartet no. 2, but the Voxare Quartet made a persuasive case for this 1950 work. The players, all recent Juilliard graduates, delivered an incisive and deeply musical performance. Daurov's big, throaty cello lines were matched by Emily Ondracek's sweet-toned first violin...violist Erik Peterson played with intensity and dedication in the revival of a lovely work."

-Strad Magazine, December 2008

The quartet played with one voice, showcasing effortless technique and fevered intensity.

-Chicago Now, October 26, 2010

"Mr. Ott gave himself ample resources...the Voxare Quartet create the sometimes sweeping, sometimes pointillistic vision of the sea.

-The New York Times, August 31, 2008

The Voxare Quartet, whose members are four recent Juilliard graduates, made its debut at Bargemusic on 21 June against some difficult odds; earlier that week, the ensemble's viola player Erik Peterson had been rushed to the hospital with a case of salmonella poisoning. Recovering on antibiotics, there he was, pale on the floating state, but in fine form as the group accompanied pianist Jeffrey Swann in arrangements of piano concertos by Mozart and Chopin. The programme opened with a dynamic, finely paced reading of Schubert's mercurial Quartettsatz. Perhaps it was the stress of the preceding week but the players seemed to channel much nervous energy into the piece. They also grasped the music's architecture: violinist Emily Ondracek seized on Schubert's opening violin melody, spanning two full octaves, while a Zen-like quality pervaded the repetitive chorale that serves as a coda.

The quartet was an alert and sympathetic partner to Swann in Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major K414 and Chopin's Piano Concerto in E minor op. 11, making the most of generally small parts."

-Strad Magazine, September 2008