Since the Guarneri’s dissolution he has maintained a blog containing his personal reflections and reminiscences (see External links).Ģnd violin John Dalley (b. When touring with the quartet, he liked to browse in antique shops, and he particularly collected old locks. He is outgoing and articulate, and has written two books. Steinhardt is 6 feet 3 inches tall, and as a result he has unusually long arms, which has made it necessary to adjust his playing posture to avoid pain. Prior to the founding of the Guarneri Quartet, Steinhardt spent four years as assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell he spent summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and in 1962 he studied in Switzerland with Joseph Szigeti. He began studying the violin at age 6, and when he was 17 he entered Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as a pupil of Ivan Galamian. Los Angeles, 1 April 1937) Steinhardt is the elder of two sons born to music-loving Polish parents. The Guarneri Quartet disbanded in 2009.ġst violin Arnold Steinhardt (b. The quartet is notable for its longevity: the group performed for 45 years with only one personnel change, when cellist David Soyer retired in 2001 and was replaced by his student Peter Wiley. The group's extensive touring and recording activities, coupled with its outreach efforts to engage audiences, contributed to the rapid growth in the popularity of chamber music during the 1970s and 1980s. Through teaching at Harpur College (which became Binghamton University), University of Maryland, Curtis Institute of Music, and at Marlboro, the Guarneri players helped nurture interest in quartet playing for a generation of young musicians. It was admired for its rich, warm, complex tone and its bold, dramatic interpretations of the quartet literature, with a particular affinity for the works of Beethoven and Bartók. The Guarneri Quartet was an American string quartet founded in 1964 at the Marlboro Music School and Festival. Retiring cellist David Soyer (seated L) passes the bow to incoming cellist Peter Wiley, as John Dalley, Arnold Steinhardt, and Michael Tree (standing L–R) look on.

The recording of both works is admirably rounded and well balanced.The Guarneri Quartet in 2001. By the end you really feel you’ve been on a compelling journey. The pacing of the music’s ebb and flow is ideal and the players capture the music’s Viennese warmth and wit perfectly, as Schoenberg’s hyper-Romantic trajectory moves inexorably towards its blissful D major, Verklärte Nacht-like close.

But it was this work that originally brought these players together as an ensemble in 1994 and familiarity with its emotional and formal demands springs from every bar. The big challenge of Schoenberg’s First Quartet (1905) is the fact of its 45-minute, four-movements-in-one span.

The fast movements have bite and rhythmic crispness, and the players keep the long slow movement taut with emotion while never descending into mawkishness. Sibelius’s Quartet (1909), written with the same spareness and intensity of expression as the contemporary Fourth Symphony, receives a performance of commanding rigour and refinement from Christian Tetzlaff and his colleagues, who often bring an appropriately cool Nordic colouring to their tone. Sibelius and Schoenberg might seem an unlikely pairing, but the two composers’ D minor quartets are well matched for their obsession with musical process, Sibelius with Beethovenian motivic development, Schoenberg with his own take on Lisztian thematic transformation. Description: A spare, intense reading of Brahms and Schoenberg

Sibelius String Quartets