Juilliard's Young Quartet

To please the querulous ears of music critics, the members of string quartets usually have to play together until they are grey. The Juilliard String Quartet is made up of virtual youngsters who have been working together for a mere five years, but even the critics have to admit that they are good.

The Juilliard made its first big splash three seasons ago by performing a cycle of the six quartets of Bela Bartok for the first time in the U.S., and playing them in a ruggedly impressive manner. With the last note, Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich, who was in Manhattan for a peace-front powwow, rushed backstage with congratulations. A Columbia Records executive signed them up for recordings.

Since then, the juilliard has won more & more friends. The next year they revived the neglected quartets of Arnold Schoenberg. Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, impulsively pronounced them "the greatest quartet in the world." The. Juilliard itself is a bit cooler about its own quality. But last week, after a series of ten Mozart quartets in Manhattan, the quartet was warming toward itself. They were mildly criticized for bringing a thought too much of their own 20th Century exuberance to Mozart's 18th Century brand. But as Violinist Robert Mann put it: "We think we played Mozart every bit as well as we did Bartok, probably better. And young people accept our classical playing as easily as the older ones do our moderns."

The quartet's four members are as American as White Christmas. First Violinist Mann, 31, comes from Portland, Ore.; Second Violinist Robert Koff, 32, from Los Angeles; Violist Raphael Hillyer, 37, from Hanover, N.H., and Cellist Arthur Winograd, 31, from Manhattan. Mann and Koff knew each other at the Juilliard conservatory; Winograd and Hillyer, a onetime violinist in the Boston Symphony, met at Tanglewood. After the war (all but Hillyer were in the Army), they got together and persuaded Juilliard President William Schuman that they were exactly what he wanted for a resident quartet.

The arrangement has worked well. In exchange for some teaching, the school guarantees the musicians a basic income. Every season except their first one, they have made enough from concerts and records to more than match the guarantee. And Juilliard benefits from having them for ensemble courses--to say nothing of the publicity and prestige.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.