The Juilliard String Quartet is one of the most celebrated of all chamber music ensembles. Founded in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet was the first ensemble to play all six Bartok quartets in the United States, and its performances of Schoenberg’s quartets helped establish the works as cornerstones of the modern string quartet literature. The Quartet’s recordings of the Bartok and Schoenberg Quartets, as well as those of Debussy, Ravel and Beethoven won Grammy Awards, and in 2011 the Quartet became the first classical music ensemble to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2014 Sony Classical reissued the Quartet’s landmark recordings of the first four Elliott Carter String Quartets together with the recently recorded Carter Quartet No. 5, making a complete historical document.

For nearly seven decades, the Quartet has made manifest the credo of its founders to ‘play new works as if they were established masterpieces and established masterpieces as if they were new’. The Quartet’s diverse repertoire for the current season includes works by Haydn, Webern, Martinu, Beethoven, Berg, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Elgar, as well as Schubert’s 'Death and the Maiden' and Shulamit Ran’s Quartet no. 2, 'Vistas'. Devoted master teachers, the members of the Juilliard Quartet offer classes and open rehearsals when on tour. At the Juilliard School, where they are the String Quartet in Residence, all are sought-after members of the string and chamber music faculty.