Mr. Soyer, the violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley and the violist Michael Tree formed the Guarneri at Marlboro in 1964, and it became one of the premier quartets in the world. He retired in 2001, its only personnel change. One of his former students, Peter Wiley, took over. The quartet retired as a whole earlier this season. At its last New York concert, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. Soyer joined in to play Schubert's String Quintet in C.
Founded in 1964, the Guarneri String Quartet is an amazing achievement of four diverse personalities, all original members, and is the longest continuing artistic collaboration of any quartet in the world. They have circled the globe countless times together, playing the world's most prestigious halls in North and South America, Mexico, Europe, the Far East and Australia. In their hometown of New York City, they have maintained their recital programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (since 1965) and presented their special series, “Guarneri and Friends" at Lincoln Center (1973-1997.)
The Quartet has been featured on many television and radio specials, documentaries and educational presentations both in North America and abroad. It was interviewed by Charles Kuralt on CBS' nationwide television program “Sunday Morning", in the summer of 1990. A full-length film entitled “High Fidelity-The Guarneri String Quartet" was released nationally, to critical acclaim, in the fall of 1989. (The film was directed and produced by Allan Miller who was also the director/producer of the Academy Award-winning documentary, “From Mozart to Mao," which dealt with Isaac Stern's visit to China.) The Quartet is also the subject of several books including “Quartet" by Helen Drees Ruttencutter (Lippincott & Crowell,1980) and “The Art of Quartet Playing: The Guarneri in Conversation with David Blum" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).
The Guarneri String Quartet has recordings on the Philips and Arabesque labels. Their most resent release on the Arabesque label is that of Schubert's Quartets Nos. 13 in A Minor Op. 29, and 14 in D Minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden." Several of their recordings on both RCA Red Seal and Philips have won international awards, including their recording of Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga's String Quartets Nos. 1-3 (Philips), which won the 1996 Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Award in Germany. Among their other award winning recordings are collaborations with such artists as Artur Rubenstein, Pinchas Zucherman and Boris Kroyt and Mischa Schneider of the Budapest Quartet.
The Dallas Morning News summed up the Guarneri when it headlined the review “Quartet is Really Quite Perfect," and went on, “The men of the Guarneri are today's aristocrats of the chamber music world. There was never a forced phrase or a hint of harshness, while interpretatively there was a certainty and urbanity to the performances that made everything during the evening ring with inevitability. It is this sort of attention to detail, this sort of preparation that tells the tale of a Guarneri performance. Yet for all the meticulousness of its performances, what one departs with is a flowing, ebbing impression of the music, not the thought that went into it. And where does that leave someone paid to write about such a concert? Feeling like a fifth leg on a table--absolutely dispensable."
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