Joachim Quartet

German string quartet. It was founded in Berlin in 1869 by the violinist Joseph Joachim, director of the Hochschule für Musik for many years. Together with colleagues from the Hochschule für Musik, Joachim gave a concert series each winter in the Berlin Singakademie for close to four decades. Ernst Schiever was second violinist from 1869 to 1872, followed by Heinrich de Ahna (1872–92), Johann Kruse (1892–7) and Carl Halir (1897–1907); de Ahna, the original viola player, was succeeded by Eduard Rappoldi (1872–7), Emanuel Wirth (1877–1906) and Karl Klingler (1906–7), while the quartet’s cellists were Wilhelm Müller (1869–79) and Robert Hausmann (1879–1907).

The annual series of concerts in Berlin were the highlights of the city’s musical life, the programmes aiming ‘to educate the nation’ as well as to provide a ‘model for students and enjoyment for the public’. The quartet also played frequently in Vienna and no German music festival was considered complete without their presence. Visits abroad included Paris, Budapest and Rome, where they gave a complete cycle of Beethoven quartets in the Palazzo Farnese in 1905. Though Joachim played regularly with Reiss, Straus and Piatti at the London Monday Popular Concerts, he did not perform with his Berlin quartet in England until 1900. They appeared annually until 1904 in St James’s Hall and moved to the Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall in 1905. In 1906 they gave the complete chamber works of Brahms in the Queen’s Hall.

[Grove Music Online, Roger Thomas Oliver, revised by Beatrix Borchard]