Mark Sokol and Andrew Jennings, violins

John Kochanowski, viola

Norman Fischer, cello

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The Concord String Quartet was named a winner of the Naumburg 1972 Chamber Music Award. Formed in 1971, they early on established itself as a leading quartet in its generation. They played throughout the U.S. with performances at Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and the New School in New York, among others. They were also a quartet in residence at the marathon concerts at the Brooklyn Academy.

They took part in the Young Artists Program at SUNY at Binghamton and in a touring residency sponsored by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Society. In 1974, they became string quartet-in-residence at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth College, each member held a position of Adjunct Associate Professor of Music. As individuals, they performed at Dartmouth and throughout the region, soloed with the Dartmouth Symphony, appeared in recital, and performed with other faculty and visiting artists in a variety of chamber music concerts.

The Concord String Quartet was committed to the performance of the American string quartet literature and to the encouragement of new works in this genre. Their award-winning albums of contemporary quartets established the Concords at the forefront of contemporary quartet performance, and unloosed a steady stream of new quartets by hopeful composers that arrived by mail several times a week for years. For much of that time, their policy was to give every new work at least a quick run-through. Numerous quartets have been written or dedicated to the Concord String Quartet.

The Concords played more than eleven hundred concerts in forty-one states and the District of Columbia, three Canadian provinces, and six foreign countries.

In 1977 the quartet won the first of two Emmy Awards (for the New England Region) for its three-part PBS broadcast "The Concord String Quartet Plays Bartok and Haydn."

For Naumburg's 50th anniversary year in 1976, the Concord String Quartet presented a concert of 3 world premieres -- Ben Johnston's Crossings for String Quartet; Lukas Foss's String Quartet No. 3; and George Rochberg's Quintet for Piano and Strings with pianist Jerome Lowenthal. This concert took place on March 15, 1976 in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.

The Concord String Quartet gave their final regular concert on May 14, 1987.

As part of their Naumburg prize, the Concord String Quartet was awarded a commission, George Rochberg's Quartet No. 3 which received its world premiere on the Concords Naumburg concert on May 15, 1972 in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.

Naumburg Concert, May 15, 1972, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

Concord String Quartet, 1972 Chamber Music Award

Mark Sokol and Andrew Jennings, violins; John Kochanowski, viola; Norman Fischer, cello

Program

Dvorak: Quartet No.67 in F, Op.96 "American"

Rochberg: Quartet No. 3, World premiere, Naumburg commission

Hindemith: Quartet No. 2 in C Major. Op. 16

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Review Excerpt, The New York Times, May 17, 1972

A Rare New Work Played by Quartet

"George Rochberg's String Quartet No. 3 (1971-72), commissioned by the Concord, received its first performance at this concert.. it is a piece of unashamed eclecticism, and very posibly Mr. Rochberg's most important to date. It goes ahead while facing backward... the material was sublimated into a strangely compelling whole that perhaps only Mr. Rochberg, at this point, could produce so brilliantly.

The Rochberg quartet, as ambitious in length and universality as either Mahler or late Beethoven, began with a series of atonal chords, reiterated as if the composer were trying to get them out of his system. A churchy mood ..followed, then back to the dissonant chords. After a Stravinskyan march, a long variation movement in pure A major that alluded to Beethoven's final quartets... another march, in Bartelltian style, with strings snapped against the fingerboard to punctuate the heavy dance rhythms, and a finale that included sentimental Mahlerian waltzes and bustling fugato in the best Beethoven finale manner.

..but the appealof this work - and on one hearing it seems certain to have lasting value - lies not in any literary stance but its unfailing formal rigor and old fashioned musicality.. Mr. Rochberg's quatet is... beautiful...It is one of the rare new works that go past collage and quotation into another, fairer land... Let's hear it again soon, somebody.

The Concord String Quartet, a superbly young group, gave the Rochberg a phenomenally intelligent and deeply imagined premiere performance" - Donal Henahan