The Alban Berg Quartett was a string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

 founded in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria in 1970, named after the famous composer Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

.

Members

Period	1st violin	2nd violin	Viola	Violoncello
1971–1978	Günter Pichler	Klaus Maetzl	Hatto Beyerle	Valentin Erben Valentin Erben Valentin Erben is an Austrian cellist.He studied with Walter Reichardt in Munich, Tobias Kühne in Vienna and André Navarra in Paris. In 1970, he became a charter member of the Alban Berg Quartet, with which he played for 38 years. He has taught cello at the Wiener Musikhochschule since 1972...
1978–1981		Gerhard Schulz
1981–2005			Thomas Kakuska Thomas Kakuska Thomas Kakuska was an Austrian viola player, best known as the violist of the Alban Berg Quartett from 1981 until his death in Vienna in 2005....
2005–2008			Isabel Charisius

Beginnings

The Berg Quartet was founded in 1970 by four young professors of the Vienna Academy of Music, and made its debut in the Vienna Konzerthaus in autumn 1971. The widow of the composer Alban Berg attended one of their earliest concerts, and was moved by their performance. When she greeted them after the concerts, she offered the idea to name themselves after him, and they accepted.

Career

The Quartet's inclination and conviction was towards the Viennese classics, through the Romantic tradition to the works of Berg, Schoenberg

Schoenberg

Schoenberg is the surname of several persons:* Arnold Schoenberg , Austrian-American composer* Claude-Michel Schoenberg , French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer...

, Webern and Bartok, and embracing great contemporary composers.

The focus of their activities became a yearly cycle at the Vienna Konzerthaus, and also regular participation in major world musical events including the Berlin Festiv weeks, the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

, IRCAM

IRCAM

IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

 in the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is an annual opera festival which was founded in April 1933 by conductor Vittorio Gui with the aim of presenting contemporary and forgotten operas in visually dramatic productions. It was the first music festival in Italy. The first opera presented was Verdi's early...

, the Salzburg Festival

Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...

 and the Vienna Festival

Vienna Festival

The Wiener Festwochen is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June.The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Allies...

.

Concert trips took the group to almost all the countries of Europe, and also to the USA, to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Recordings were an important part of the work of the Alban Berg Quartet. Among the prizes obtained by their recordings were the Grand Prix du Disque

Grand Prix du Disque

The Grand Prix du Disque is the premier French award for musical recordings. The award was inaugurated by l'Académie Charles Cros in 1948 and offers prizes in various categories. The categories vary from year to year, and multiple awards are often made in any one category in the same year...

, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the Japanese Grand Prix and the Vienna Flötenuhr. The group received the highest accolades from the international press, and was considered one of the great ensembles of its time by critics around the world.

Teaching

Quartets who studied with the Alban Berg quartet include the Nevsky String Quartet

Nevsky String Quartet

Nevsky String Quartet is a string quartet based in St. Petersburg, Russia. They are noted for their award-winning performances of Russian music and their performances of contemporary music.-History and Repertoire:...

, the aron quartet, and the Artemis Quartet.

Retirement

In 2005, Thomas Kakuska died of cancer. Before his death he nominated one of his students, Isabel Charisius, to succeed him. The Quartet felt that Charisius did an excellent job, but as cellist Valentin Erben said, "There was a big rupture in our hearts."

After an announcement that the last concert would be held in Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, the final South American tour included concerts at the Teatro Coliseo, in Buenos Aires, Teatro Cultura Artística

Teatro Cultura Artística

Since 1919, Sociedade de Cultura Artística nurtured the dream of having its own theatre in São Paulo, Brazil.This was only made possible in the late 1940s. The construction of the theatre, between the years 1947 and 1950, was a period of enormous enthusiasm...

, in São Paulo, and Sala Cecília Meireles, in Rio de Janeiro. After giving two extra concerts in Taipei, Taiwan held in memorial of their late friend, Yuan-Dong Sheu, the ex-president of the Central Bank of Taiwan on 12 and 13, July, 2008; and the quartet finally disbanded after concerts at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

, China, on 15 and 16 July 2008.