The Shanghai Quartet is known for its passionate musicality, impressive technique, and expansive repertoire which melds the delicacy of Eastern music with the emotional breadth of the Western canon. The group is now bringing the complete cycle of Beethoven's quartets to Beijing. Their Chinese city tour was launched Thursday at Beijing's Forbidden City Concert hall. Shen Li reports.

The first of the six concerts in the Complete Beethoven String Quartet Cycle, featuring the incomparable Shanghai Quartet.

While Beethoven is best known for his symphonies, such as "Fate" and "Ode to Joy", he also produced remarkable string quartets.

Thursday's concert is part of the Shanghai Quartet's project to commemorate the one-hundred and ninety-first anniversary of Beethoven's death, by sharing the maestro's works with their audiences.

Formed in 1983, the quartet is now made up of: first violinist Weigang Li, second violinist Yi-Wen Jiang, violist Honggang Li, and cellist Nicholas Tzavaras.

WEIGANG LI VIOLINIST, SHANGHAI QUARTET "We're presenting the entire cycle of the Beethoven quartet which consists of 17 quartets into 6 concerts, we thought this is also sort of a jump start for us to do in China, for a series of chamber music listening."

HONGGANG LI VIOLIST, SHANGHAI QUARTET "Beethoven also treated the string quartets very importantly. The last five years (of his life) he only wrote five string quartets, nothing else, basically."

The group first performed the entire Beethoven cycle back in 2003 for the troupe's 20th anniversary. Cellist Nicolas Tzavaras believes it is the pursuit of perfection that drove them to revisit the maestro's works.

NICHOLAS TZAVARAS CELLIST, SHANGHAI QUARTET "The Beethoven quartets stands as a, perhaps the most important part of the quartet's literature. We did our first cycle in 2003 for our 20th anniversary. Sometimes we'll put the piece down for a few years, and we'll bring it back, we'll have a different perspective maybe something we did one way ten years ago, we'll try a different way. It's very exciting because of that flexibility."

Works from Beethoven's early, middle and late career have been carefully selected to give the audiences a general picture of the composer's musical development.

For the Shanghai Quartet, working through the cycle is also been a nostalgic experience.

YIWEN JIANG VIOLINIST, SHANGHAI QUARTET "His later quartets were written around our age. I think through this journey, our audience and our listeners could see clearly the growth from the beginning to the end of his life, his growth expand, not musically compositionally but also as a person."

After the Beijing leg, the Shanghai Quartet will take the Beethoven Cycle to Tianjin, Wuhan, Changsha, and Suzhou. SL, CGTN.