Jerusalem Quartet at Kleinhans Music Hall | April 28, 2026

Here is the thing about the Mary Seaton Room at Kleinhans: it holds fewer than 700 people, which means that on a night like this — the Jerusalem Quartet, a Beethoven program closing with the Grosse Fuge, and a new work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer — you are genuinely close to something extraordinary. Plan to arrive by 6:45 PM. There is a pre-concert talk, and for a program this ambitious, you will want the context.

The Jerusalem Quartet was founded in 1993 and has spent the decades since becoming one of the premier string ensembles in the world. The Times of London described their playing as “passion, precision, warmth, a gold blend” — and that track record follows them across a discography that spans Haydn, Schubert, Bartók, and Ravel. That last one matters here: Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major opens the April 28 program, and there is something different about hearing a quartet play a work they have lived with for years in a room where the sound has nowhere to hide. Awards from the Diapason d’Or and the BBC Music Magazine confirm what their audiences already know.

The program also features a new work composed specifically for the quartet by Shulamit Ran, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer — premiere status is still being confirmed. The night closes with Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, paired with the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. That pairing is a major undertaking for any ensemble; hearing it in a 700-seat room rather than a 2,000-seat hall is exactly the kind of thing that makes a show worth the drive.

Kleinhans Music Hall is home to the Buffalo Philharmonic, but the Mary Seaton Room is built for chamber music — and Buffalo’s concert scene has been supporting evenings like this since the Buffalo Chamber Music Society was founded in the 1920s. Tuesday nights like this are why they have lasted a century.

Tickets are on sale now. Head to the Jerusalem Quartet tickets page before this one fills in — the Mary Seaton Room does not have many seats, and a program this serious will not go unnoticed.