Juilliard String Quartet - The Early Columbia Recordings

The Juilliard String Quartet is undoubtedly one of the central string quartet formations after the Second World War. Founded in New York in 1947, it quickly caused a sensation with its recordings for the Columbia label with its fundamentally unsentimental, yet precise and expressive reading. This was especially true of the first Bartok cycle ever (1949), which was to be followed by two more. These early mono recordings from the years up to 1956 were not available for a very long time. In addition to works by contemporary composers such as William Schuman, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson or Samuel Barber with his Hermitsongs (and Leontyne Price as a soloist), the 16 excellently remastered CDs also contain compositions by Mozart, Ravel, Berg, Webern and Milhaud as well, also a remarkable rarity, the four quartets by Arnold Schönberg. Many of these albums are being released on CD for the first time.