Elliott Carter’s five string quartets are landmarks in the American composer’s rich, visionary body of work. And no ensemble has been as essential in bringing these works to life as the Juilliard String Quartet. Their performances grew out of a friendship that spanned over half a century.

Since its inception in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet has made manifest the credo of founders Robert Mann and William Schuman to “play new works as if they were established masterpieces, and established masterpieces as if they were new”. They have performed over 500 works, including the premieres of more than 60 pieces by American composers, with works by the country’s finest jazz musicians among them.

The Juilliard 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 canon.

The Quartet’s recordings of the complete Bartok quartets, the late Beethoven quartets, the complete Schoenberg quartets and Debussy and Ravel quartets have all received Grammy Awards. They were inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences in 1986 for their first recording of the complete Bartok quartets and were awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1993 for Lifetime Achievement in the recording industry.

In 2011 the Juilliard String Quartet became the first classical music ensemble to be honoured by The Recording Academy (the Grammy Awards) with a Lifetime Achievement Award.