String Quartets You Should Know!

For my students, I am accumulating a list of essential artists and ensembles that they need to go listen to, and whose work shaped our art and craft.  Below is a list of the groups that I want my students to know, and whose recordings and performances I have admired and cherished during my journey as a cellist and quartet player.  I'm sure there are groups I'm missing, and welcome your suggestions!  I urge all of my students to go listen to these groups, compare and contrast their styles, and shamelessly adopt as much as you can for your own interpretive journey.

Budapest

Vermeer

Juilliard

Tokyo

Guarneri

Beaux Arts Trio

Busch

Kolisch

Griller

Berg

Amadeus

Fine Arts

Pro Arte

Hollywood
Emerson

Hagen

Hungarian

LaSalle

Panocha

Quartetto Italiano

Rosé

Borodin

Orford

List of Cellists

For my cello students, I think it is essential that they know their cello lineage, their cello ancestry, and the history of our instrument.  It’s amazing, as vast and storied as the history of the cello is, how interconnected we all are.  In most cases, the laws of six degrees of separation are more like two or three degrees in the cello world.  For example, in my case, my wonderful teachers studied with Casals, Alexanian, Starker, Navarra, Feuermann, Salmond and Rowell; my grandfather, who was a cellist, studied with Klengel in Leipzig.  You get my point; we are all closely linked through the web of cello history.

I’ve begun compiling a list of the cellists that I want my students to know, listen to, read about and learn from.  So I sat down and jotted down a list of the first 60 cellists that came to my mind.  For the cellists from the 20^th century, when I see their names, I immediately think of their sounds and styles from the concerts and recordings I grew up listening to. 

So here you go:

Claus Adam

Diran Alexanian

Paul Bazelaire

Hugo Becker

Luigi Boccherini

Jean Baptiste Breval

Carter Brey

Anner Bylsma

Pablo Casals

Gaspar Cassado

Orlando Cole

Friedrich Dotzauer

J.P. Duport

Jacqueline DuPre

Emmanuel Feuermann

Pierre Fournier

Auguste Franchomme

Raya Garbousova

Maurice Gendron

David Geringas

Georg Golterman

Bernard Greehouse

F.W. Grutzmacher

Natalia Gutman

Lynn Harrell

Beatrice Harrison

Steven Isserlis

Antonio Janigro

Marc Johnson

Paul Katz

Julius Klengel

Maria Kliegel

Anton Kraft

Joel Krosnick

Friedrich Kummer

Yo-Yo Ma

Mischa Maisky 

Frank Miller

Truls Mork

Andre Navarra

Zara Nelsova

Alfredo Piatti           

Gregor Piatigorsky

Aldo Parisot

William Pleeth

David Popper

Gabor Rejto

Carl Romberg

Leonard Rose

Mstislav Rostropovich

Margaret Rowell

Felix Salmond

Heinrich Schiff

Harvey Shapiro

Luigi Silva

David Soyer

Janos Starker

W.H. Squire

Paul Tortelier

Laszlo Varga

Peter Wispelwey