Juilliard String Quartet

 

Violinist Joseph Lin to Become First Violinist of
The Juilliard String Quartet Beginning 2011

 

The Juilliard String Quartet is internationally renowned and admired for performances characterized by a clarity of structure, beauty of sound, purity of line and an extraordinary unanimity of purpose. Celebrated for its performances of works by composers as diverse as Beethoven, Schubert, Bartók and Elliott Carter, it has long been recognized as the quintessential American string quartet.

 

In the 2010/11 season, the Juilliard String Quartet performs throughout North America, including dates at Alice Tully Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Louisville Chamber Music Society, Van Cliburn Concerts and elsewhere. They also make their annual tour of Europe, and on February 12, 2011, the Juilliard String Quartet was honored by The Recording Academy with a Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, at a ceremony in Los Angeles, with members past and present in attendance.

Highlights of 2009/10 included Da Camera of Houston, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Shriver Hall Concert Series in Baltimore, dates at The Juilliard School, and tours in Japan and throughout Europe.

 

Recent seasons heard the JSQ in concert at the Kennedy Center, on tour in Australia, at the Konzerthaus Vienna, at the Palacio Real in Madrid, and at the Cité de la musique in Paris with an accompanying two-day residency at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. The Juilliard String Quartet offered special programming in recognition of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, performing the world premiere of his new Clarinet Quintet with Charles Neidich at The Juilliard School, the European premiere of the work at the Konzerthaus Berlin, and his String Quartet No. 2 in concerts around the world. As ardent advocates of Carter's complex and visionary string quartets, the Juilliard's landmark recording of Quartets Nos. 1-4 was released by Sony in 1991. The Quartet celebrated its 60^th anniversary season with complete Bartók cycles (the Juilliard Quartet played the American premiere of the Bartók cycle at Tanglewood in 1948) in major cities throughout the U.S. and Japan. In honor of both the Juilliard’s 60^thbirthday and the Shostakovich centennial, Sony BMG Masterworks released a 2-CD set of the Juilliard Quartet's recordings of Shostakovich Quartets Nos. 3, 14, 15 and the Piano Quintet with Yefim Bronfman. The Juilliard Quartet also celebrated Mozart's 250^th birthday, performing Quartets K. 421, K. 428 and K. 465, newly informed by first-edition parts recently donated to The Juilliard School. Other recent highlights include a pair of concerts presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall; the world premiere of Ezequiel Viñao's Quartet II, “The Loss and the Silence,” commissioned for them by The Juilliard School in honor of its 2006 centennial; and international performances of Bach’s “Art of the Fugue.”

 

In 2003 the Quartet marked the celebrations of its 40^th anniversary as Quartet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress with a twelve-concert complete Beethoven cycle interspersed with works by American composers whose work the Quartet has championed throughout its existence. The JSQ has performed complete Beethoven cycles in seven-concert series at Alice Tully Hall in New York, at Casals Hall in Tokyo, at Michigan State University and, most recently, at the International Beethoven Festival in Bonn and at the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf.

 

At Carnegie Hall, the Quartet appeared on Maurizio Pollini’s “Perspectives” series with pianist Martha Argerich, and in the Hall’s 100^th anniversary gala. Annual guests at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Juilliards played in the Hall’s opening concert and are the lead-off artists in the recent recording celebrating its 10^th anniversary. They are frequent guests at the Miyazaki Festival in Japan and at festivals in Europe including the Lucerne Festival and the Schubertiade in Feldkirch. In a departure from the classical norm, the Juilliard Quartet has twice been the featured ensemble – comedic and musical – on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion.”  

As Quartet-in-Residence at New York City's Juilliard School, the Juilliard String Quartet is widely admired for its seminal influence on aspiring string players around the world. The Quartet continues to play an important role in the formation of new American ensembles and was instrumental in the formation of the Alexander, American, Concord, Emerson, La Salle, New World, Mendelssohn, Tokyo, Brentano, Lark, St. Lawrence, Shanghai and Colorado string quartets.

 

In a momentous occasion at Tanglewood in 1997, the Juilliard String Quartet's founder and first violinist Robert Mann retired from the group after fifty years. Earlier that season, Musical America named the Quartet “Musicians of the Year," making it the first chamber music ensemble ever to appear on the cover of the publication's annual International Directory of the Performing Arts.

In its history, the Juilliard String Quartet has performed a comprehensive repertoire of some 500 works, ranging from the great classical composers to masters of the current century. It was the first ensemble to play all six Bartók quartets in the United States, and it was through the group's performances that the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg were rescued from obscurity. An ardent champion of contemporary American music, the Quartet has premiered more than 60 compositions of American composers, including works by some of America's finest jazz musicians.

 

The ensemble has been associated with Sony Classical, in its various incarnations, since 1949. This season saw the digital release of classic JSQ recordings on iTunes. In celebration of the Quartet's 50th anniversary, Sony released seven CDs containing previously unreleased material as well as notable performances from the Quartet's award-winning discography. With more than 100 releases to its credit, the ensemble is one of the most widely recorded string quartets of our time. Its recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets, the complete Schoenberg quartets, and the Debussy and Ravel string quartets have all received Grammy Awards. Inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences in 1986 for its recording of the complete Bartók string quartets, the Juilliard Quartet was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1993 for Lifetime Achievement in the recording industry. In 1994, its recording of quartets by Ravel, Debussy, and Dutilleux was chosen by the Times of London as one of the 100 best classical CDs ever recorded.