Juilliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. The original members were violinists Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violist Raphael Hillyer, and cellist Arthur Winograd; Current members are Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes violinists, violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Astrid Schween. In 2010 Nick Eanet resigned from the Quartet because of health issues and was replaced by Joseph Lin in 2011. Former second violinist, later first after Mann's retirement, Joel Smirnoff left the quartet after its 2008-2009 season to become president of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Since the Quartet's inception in 1946, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous awards, including four Grammys and membership in the National Academy Recording Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. In February 2011, the Juilliard Quartet received the NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award for its outstanding contributions to recorded classical music. The quartet plays a wide range of classical music, and has recorded works by composers such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bartók, Debussy, and Shostakovich, while also promoting more contemporary composers such as Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey, Henri Dutilleux and Milton Babbitt. It has performed with other noted musicians such as Aaron Copland, Glenn Gould, Benita Valente and also (in its earlier days) with the famous scientist Albert Einstein. They have participated on the soundtrack of Immortal Beloved movie. The quartet began recording with Sony Classical (formerly Columbia Records and CBS Masterworks) in 1949, and the group's discography currently numbers over 100 items, including repertoire well-traveled and unfamiliar. In 1950 the quartet made the first of at least three appearances at the Peabody Mason Concerts in Boston. At that performance they made a world performance premiere of Martin Boykan's String Quartet of 1949. Their early 1950s recordings of the six Bartok string quartets on the Columbia Records label and various works recorded for the RCA Living Stereo label (c. 1958-1962) are particularly acclaimed. In 2015, the quartet released an app for Apple's iOS entitled "Juilliard String Quartet – An Exploration of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden". The recording was issued separately on audio by Ulysses Arts. The app was co-produced by the London-based app developer Touchpress and The Juilliard School. The app features the quartet in a performance of Franz Schubert’s celebrated String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, better known as "Death and the Maiden.