The Juilliard String Quartet Plays Schoenberg: 7 CDs

Release Date July 26, 2024

7 CD Edition

First release on CD of the Juilliard Quartet's complete 1975 string quartet cycle

Arnold Schoenberg, one of the 20th century’s most influential musical figures, was born in Vienna in 1874. Sony Classical celebrates the 150th anniversary of the great composer’s birth with a 20-CD reissue of CBS/American Columbia recordings. The label was a pioneer in documenting Schoenberg’s work and demonstrated that commitment during the artist’s lifetime (he died in 1952). In 1940, with the composer at the helm, Columbia Masterworks made the first-ever recording of one of his most captivating and revolutionary works, Pierrot lunaire; and in the 1950s and 60s, the label embarked on a groundbreaking multi-volume series titled “The Music of Arnold Schoenberg.” But arguably no recordings have done more to further the cause of Schoenberg’s orchestral and vocal works than those by Pierre Boulez, while none have done more to further his chamber music than those by the Juilliard Quartet. Sony Classical now presents all of Boulez’s Schoenberg for CBS/Columbia in a 13-CD box, and all of the Juilliard’s in a 7-disc set.

The Juilliard Quartet took its “profoundly intelligent” Schoenberg performances (Gramophone) into the studio over an even longer period: four decades, beginning with its first traversal of the numbered string quartets in 1951/52 (“Magnificent recordings” – Gramophone). In 1975, the Juilliard Quartet returned to Columbia’s 30th Street Studio for a new, stereo version of the four “official” quartets, now joined by the first recording of the D major quartet, a charming student work that could almost be mistaken for Dvořák.

But it was not solely technological advances that led the Juilliard Quartet to re-record Schoenberg after years of regularly performing the quartets in concert. In an interview regarding the evolution of their performances with the recording’s producer, the performers spoke of an increasingly romantic approach, especially in Nos. 3 and 4, with less emphasis on rhythmic drive but greater emotional intensity. The recording earned them the 1977 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.

Both the mono and stereo quartet cycles are included in Sony Classical’s new 7-CD collection of the complete Juilliard Schoenberg recordings. And there are also two Juilliard versions to compare – one from 1966 (the work’s premiere on LP), the other from 1985 – of the extraordinarily intense string trio that Schoenberg composed because of a heart attack that caused his heart to stop beating. Something of that experience is reflected in the music. And, speaking of comparison, the New York Philharmonic recording of Schoenberg’s splendid orchestral arrangement of his Verklärte Nacht in the Pierre Boulez collection is complemented here by the more elegant original sextet version, with the Juilliard Quartet joined in 1991 by violist Walter Trampler and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.