Though Shostakovich began writing string quartets well after he had established himself as a symphonist and a composer of operas, they assumed ever greater importance in his output, eventually reaching a total of 15 - the same as his symphonies. Unlike the big public works that occasionally landed him in serious trouble with the authorities, the quartets are usually seen as essentially private and personal in meaning. The final concert in this series in which two Israeli ensembles divided the entire cycle between them offered two big works, both of them rich, subtle and ultimately troublingly ambiguous experiences.

The fifth quartet, dating from 1952 and withheld from performance until after Stalin's death the following year, contains one highly personal reference in its repeated quotation of a theme from a trio by Shostakovich's pupil Galina Ustvolskaya. He later proposed to her twice, to be twice rebuffed, so it's fair to assume a serious emotional involvement.

In fact, the music has a wide range, from passion and tenderness through jauntiness to a darker vein of comedy, and its high technical demands were met with absolute assurance by these young players, their confident attack and nigh-on flawless ensemble playing, impressive throughout its substantial span.

Even more of a challenge was the altogether denser and tenser ninth quartet of 1964, whose alternately spare and spiky textures extend through the opening Moderato and two disquieting slow movements wrapped around a grotesque scherzo before reaching some sort of resolution in an invigorating finale. What the Jerusalem's performance lacked was a sense of the burning intensity of much of this material, while their earlier version of Shostakovich's own arrangement of the Polka from his satirical ballet The Golden Age needed a wackier, more knockabout approach for its silent-film comedy to really hit the spot.