Cleveland Quartet - Beethoven: The Complete Quartets (1997)

For more than a quarter of a century, the Cleveland Quartet has been hailed as one of the premier string quartets of our time. Since its founding in 1969, it has played more than 2,000 concerts (including appearnaces in music capitols throughout the world), created award-winning recordings of more than sixty chamber works, presented premieres and repeat performances of new music by contemporary composers, and spent countless hours as dedicated teachers-performers. Following its December 1995 Farewell Recital, having achieved an unrivalled record of artistic success, the Quartet disbanded where it began, in Cleveland. Their 1995 Telarc recording of the String Quartet by Corigliano, commissioned by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for the group’s Farewell Tour, won two Grammy Awards, for Best Chamber Music Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

The ensemble’s series of the complete Beethoven string quartets for Telarc has been critically acclaimed since its inception. Begun and completed during 1995, the performances reflect a culmination of over twenty-five years of refined, world-renowned ensemble playing. Here Telarc offers this legendary series of recordings complete for the first time, in a beautifully boxed 8-CD set.