Of their performance at the Ventura Chamber Music Festival (California):
Rossetti Quartet's New Violinist a Plus for Festival

"The Rossetti performance last Friday, in the lovely and agreeably resonant Community Presbyterian Church, gained an unexpected freshness with the debut of a new voice in the first violinist role.

Nina Bodnar, the formidable Rossetti leader, recently departed from the group, was replaced by the young, comspicuously gifted Timonthy Fain, a Santa Monica native well-received in New York and elsewhere. The result added drama to the evening. All ears were on the new kid, a quick study who started with the group only a week earlier, but acquitted himself with aplomb in a meat-and-potatoes program of Haydn, Mozart and Borodin....

[Borodin's] familiar, dreamy melodies of the second and third movements were treated with proper care and subtlety, making what can be a confection a lustrous thing."
- Los Angeles Times 5/6/02

Of their performance with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet at the Library of Congress (Washington DC):
Rossetti's Perfect French

"The Rossetti String Quartet played Debussy's G Minor Quartet, Op. 10, so beautifully at the Library of Congress on Tuesday that customary distractions - the whine of air conditioning, the allergy-triggered hacking, the cries of an unhappy toddler - seemed like full-fledged affronts to the rapt musicmaking. The Rossetti's tone had a sensual finish, and its phrasing practically palpitated with ardor and mastery.

Only seven years separate Debussy's quartet from Cesar Franck's Piano Quintet, but while both surge with mercurial changes of mood, Franck's seething, restless chromaticism makes for a wilder ride. The Rossetti took Franck's hairpin curves fearlessly, but pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet was clearly in the driver's seat...

Thibaudet and Rossetti cofounder and second violinist Henry Gronnier opened the program with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Romance for Violin and Piano. Eloquent in its economy, this wistful, layered work received a golden-toned, heartfelt (but never heart-on-the-sleeve) performance from the duo."
-The Washington Post 4/18/02

Of their performance at the Carlsen Center, Kansas City:

"It [Rossetti String Quartet] demonstrated musical spunk in its headstrong approach to color and phrasing.

The ensemble played with warmth, blended well and demonstrated good control of dynamics and tempo.

The strong performance of the evening was for Ravel's Quartet in F major. The ensemble seemed to thrive in the animated rhythms and richer sonorities of this work and responded throughout with fire and passion. In particular, violist Thomas Diener and cellist Eric Gaenslen demonstrated a rich melodic sense in the third movement. Near the end of the same movement, Bodnar produced a light, sheer line that was quite breathtaking."
- The Sun Newspapers, Kansas City 11/24/00

"Youthful and telegenic, the chamber ensemble delivered on the promise of its namesake, and then some, during a well-crafted 90 minutes of enjoyable music-making Sunday night at the Carlsen Center.

The Ravel was well-served by the players' precise pizzicato and shimmering, almost incandescent reading of the Allegro movemenr. With its dancelike rhythms and vaguely Bohemian air, Dvorak's Quartet in E flat major, Op. 51 took up the evening's second half. Violist Thomas Diener and cellist Eric Gaenslen anchored the piece with flair, skillfully evoking its folk-based idioms and mercurial mood shifts."
- The Star, Kansas City 11/20/00

Of their performance at the UCSB Campbell Hall (Santa Barbara, CA.):

"Their program of Mendelssohn, Kodaly and Dvorak emerged gentle on the tender new skin of a recently formed collaboration. The opening Mendelssohn Quartet in A minor was a curious mixture of whispered sensitivity bordering on caution, the players feeling their way around the theme of great yearning and pain with extreme awareness and often admirable constraint. This delicate balance was done, interestingly, with an emotionally corresponding musical material - a three-note motto from a love poem, 'Is es wahr?' ('Is it true?').

From agitated ad libitum passages to fleeting delicate scherzi, it is evident that Bodnar is the driving force of the Rossetti group, whose newest addition is Eric Gaenslen on cello. Thomas Diener and second violinist Henry Gronnier, both founding member of the original ensemble, highlighted her passions more than interjecting their own, but there are hints here of ripening and development.

The Quartet No. 2 of Zoltan Kodaly, got a warm, clear reading, with the fiery gypsy of Bodnar's violin weaving through a largely controlled dynamic response that resembled Hungarian peasants in Sunday dress rather than everyday costume. There was more blood, more good old reckless vitality in the Dvorak E-flat major quartet that followed intermission, particularly on the part of cellist Gaenslen.

Responding to a standing ovation and heaps of flowers, the musicians gave one encore, a rapturous, moody performance of a romance by Rachmaninoff."
- Santa Barbara News Press 5/13/02

Of their performances in the Netherlands:

Works by Mozart, Kodaly and Franck (in Arnhem) -
"The part of the cello in this Mozart quartet is especially prominent. In this respect, the new cello player of the Rossetti Quartet did a wonderful job - the quality of his tone did blend well with that of his colleagues. They played this Mozart piece, especially at the beginning, with soft and certainly beautiful colors.

Everything seemed effortless for these musicians. Scintillating ensemble playing, characterizing all facets of the music in great detail. Nina Bodnar - the first violinist of the quartet and for six years the concertmaster of the Saint Louis Symphony - has vivid articulation and is the soul of this clear and homogeneous quartet.

The cellist is no longer Cecilia Tsan, but Eric Gaenslen, who succeeds the Asian-looking French player. He has a musical and focused tone and is an asset of the Rossetti String Quartet...."
- Leewardse Courant 2/14/00

The quartet "has a perfectly finished character..." who "...played the Mozart quartet for the most part in soft but certainly uncommonly beautiful colors." ...played Kodaly "with great expression, not rough or wild, when that sometimes might be desirable, but always with great melodiousness, and also conscious of putting on an unreserved show of all the dance rhythms that make this work so rich." - De Gelderlander 2/15/00

"...string players of great class..." who "...let us hear the singing side of Mozart..." and who played Franck "..in solid unity performing the tight melodic lines like one person;" and Kodaly "...with sensitivity and astonishing technique..."
- De Arnhemse Courant 2/16/00


Works by Dvorak at the Concertgebouw, Kleine Zaal (Amsterdam)
"What can be more magnificent than a string quartet blessed with the name of a painter - the American Rossetti String Quartet is named after Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a 19th century painter who recaptured naturalism. The French pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, with his unorthodox stage deportment, is also a picturesque figure. Therefore, in a weekend mini-series, Thibaudet and the Rossetti String Quartet were ideal musical partners.

The Dvorak Opus 5 piano quintet is full of possibilities for a romantic, melodic-picture. The Brahms-like intensity of the four strong string artist, the Rossetti Quartet - with a prominent tone formation by the cellist discretely drew away attention from the fact that this was an early work.

In the second Dvorak piano quartet, Thibaudet and the Rossetti String Quartet merged completely in passionate playing, during which the first violinist Nina Bodnar added many delicate, exquisite touches."
- Noordhollands Dagblad 3/29/99



Of their performance at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre (Chamber Music in Historic Sites series - Los Angeles):

Rossetti String Quartet Displays Skill, Passion

The Rossetti String Quartet, just three years in business, first played here... in April. Sunday morning at the Ford, it lived up to the glowing reports of that earlier visit.

The groups' present achievement is stunning and its future brilliant. Its members, violinists Nina Bodnar, Henry Gronnier, violist Thomas Diener and guest cellist Eric Gaenslen - the fiery Cecilia Tsan is away for the month of June - are of one mind and one musical attack. A generous program, encompassing Beethoven's C-minor Quartet, Opus 19, No. 4, the Debussy Quartet and Brahms' Piano Quintet, Opus 34, exposed the quartet to deep scrutiny, and it triumphed.

The tough agenda elicited a deep resonance of spirit and execution. Beethoven's glowering C-minor quartet showed the players' faceted dramatic and lyric resources and their dynamic breadth. The Debussy revealed polished finesse and an unforced command of detail.

With the senstive and solid Armen Guzelimian at the piano (the problem of string/piano balance was mostly ameliorated here by the outdoor placement), the Rossetti gave Brahms' F-minor Quintet deserved coherence and clarity in a substantial and transparent performance that served both its intellect and its muscle.
- Los Angeles Times 6/22/99


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