Juilliard String Quartet

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. Recent seasons heard the JSQ in concert 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 60th 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 60th birthday 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. 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.” At Carnegie Hall, the Quartet appeared on Maurizio Pollini’s “Perspectives” series with pianist Martha Argerich, and in the Hall’s 100th anniversary gala. 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. The ensemble has been associated with Sony Classical, in its various incarnations, since 1949 and 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. 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, last season saw the digital release of classic JSQ recordings on iTunes.