CCMusic.com

It was in 1964 - a few years after an early foray into Beethoven with four of the works for RCA Victor's Red Seal label - that the Juilliard String Quartet embarked on this complete set. They started out with the three "Razumovsky" and "Harp" quartets, which Columbia released the next year on it's subsidiary Epic label. The six "Early Quartets", op. 18, followed in 1968-69; the "Late Quartets" in 1969-70, along with op. 95 to complete the set of "Middle Quartets". By now all the Juilliard recordings were appearing on Columbia Masterworks, including their Beethoven in three separate volumes. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, Sony Classical is pleased to present the Juilliard's complete cycle for the first time in a single box, newly remastered on nine albums. In a 1970 survey of available recordings of the "Middle Quartets", High Fidelity, the leading US record journal, pinpointed the ensemble's special qualities: "The Juilliard plays with a sense of precision and rhythmic thrust unmatched by any other quartet currently active... I find their playing highly expressive, but this expressivity is the result of clear articulation of formal structure rather than mere surface nuance."