The Record Features Performances of Mozart, Finzi, Corigliano, and More

Award-winning Tesla Quartet—a talented quartet comprised of award-winning artists Ross Snyder and Michelle Lie on violins, Edwin Kaplan on viola, and Serafim Smigelskiy on cello—recently released its second album Joy & Desolation on Orchid Classics in collaboration with celebrated and acclaimed Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein. 

The album, which was created to emphasize the idea of contrast, celebrates the duality of light and darkness, joy and despair, isolation and inclusion, through carefully curated works from Mozart, Christian Alexander, John Corigliano, and Carolina Heredia. 

Recorded at Wyastone, a retired concert hall along the River Wye in England, both Fiterstein and the Tesla Quartet used this opportunity to dive deep into their art and their influence, further exploring how they collaborate and make music together. 

The album follows the 2018 release of the Tesla Quartet’s debut album of Haydn, Ravel, and Stravinsky quartets on the Orchid Classics label. This album was celebrated by BBC Music Magazine, which awarded it the double 5-star rating and featured it as the “Chamber Choice” for the month of December. Additionally, Gramophone praised the quartet for its “tautness of focus and refinement of detail” in its first album.

The sophomore album from the quartet is anticipated to bring similar awards, recognition, and honors. 

The Tesla Quartet finds its inspiration in the famed words of Nikola Tesla, “though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them.” 

For the quartet, music is the conduit for the binding force—the “ties inseparable” that Tesla speaks of. 

The dedicated quartet deliberately focuses on teaching, outreach, and performance in order to penetrate into this very real, very powerful feeling of meaningful connection with an audience.