Alban Berg Quartett

Established in 1971, the Alban Berg Quartet attained recognition within ten years as one of the preeminent string quartets worldwide. Its reputation rested on extensive recorded cycles encompassing the complete quartets of numerous masters in the genre.

All founding members belonged to a Viennese chamber orchestra and, during their gatherings for chamber music, recognized the essential musical rapport needed to launch a distinguished quartet. To pay homage to a Viennese composer, they chose the name Alban Berg, a participant in the group of atonal composers known as the Second Viennese School. Violist Thomas Kakuska noted that the name underscores both Berg’s involvement in this innovative circle and his standing as its most traditionally oriented member. He remarked, "We have chosen our name to show that we want to make a balance between the Romantic repertoire and also to play contemporary music."

The quartet shaped its interpretations through unanimous agreement rather than the authority of any single player. Reviewers regularly cited its outstanding ensemble cohesion, marked by precise intonation and shared artistic direction, together with an unusual uniformity of tone among the four musicians. The resulting sound remained warm yet could become rhythmically incisive whenever the music demanded it.

Its celebrated discography features complete quartet cycles by Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartók, along with the string quartet works of Berg and Anton Webern. Additional recordings cover substantial portions of the quartet literature by Mozart, Haydn, Dvorák, both Janácek quartets, and compositions by Ravel, Schumann, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Berio. In newer repertoire, the ensemble produced acclaimed accounts of quartets by von Einem, Haubenstock-Ramati, Rihm, Schnittke, and Urbanner, many of them written expressly for and dedicated to the group. In 1977 it honored Franz Schubert by performing solely his music throughout the composer’s bicentennial year.

The quartet’s members were violinists Günter Pichler and Gerhard Schulz, violist Thomas Kakuska, and cellist Valentin Erben, with Pichler, Schulz, and Erben constituting the original lineup. All four served on the faculty of the Wiener Hochschule für Musik and regularly offered master classes in German chamber music at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. They received thirty major international recording awards, covering virtually every significant prize. Before Kakuska’s death in 2005 he requested that his student Isabel Charisius assume his position; she did so successfully, yet the quartet elected to disband in 2008.