The Amadeus Quartet were the most successful and highly-regarded quartet of the 20th century. Benefitting from the jet aeroplane and from the record industry’s ability to reach out to world, they dominated chamber music making for nearly 40 years.

But concert tours are only successful if reviews are ecstatic and audiences delighted. They both were. For nearly 40 years, the Quartet (who styled themselves ‘The Wolf-Gang’) roved the world, argued, celebrated and worked like no other group, and changed not a single member: Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, Peter Schidlof and Martin Lovett had a recording career from 1951 to 1987, ending only with the death of Peter Schidlof in 1987.

These 70 CDs – presenting almost their entire discography, together with distinguished and extensive presentation – form one of the most extensive chamber music sets ever created, and stand as eloquent testimony to their thoughtful musicianship, technical calibre and to the immense esteem in which the world held them.

• This 70-CD set presents the Amadeus Quartet’s Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon on the occasion of the Quartet’s 70th Anniversary

• Several recordings released for the first time ever, others new to CD

• Each album presented in original jackets with facsimiles of original recording session reports

• 180-page book presents new notes by Daniel Snowman (author of The Amadeus Quartet: The Men and the Music), plus an introductory note by Martin Lovett, sole surviving member of the Amadeus Quartet; and previously unpublished photographs from the archives of the Quartet’s families

• The key Austro-German quartet repertoire – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms – with several works recorded more than once of the course of the Amadeus’s career

• Key masterpieces by Bruckner, Dvořák, Smetana and Tchaikovsky

• The group’s rarer forays into contemporary repertoire: Bridge, Britten (whose final string quartet was written for the Amadeus), Fricker, Rainier, MacMillan

• Multiple recordings of certain repertoire make for fascinating comparisons over the course of a recording career which spanned 1951 to 1987

The Amadeus Quartet debuted at the Wigmore Hall on 10 January 1948 to an enthusiastic reception. Though their repertory was mainly the Austro-German greats, they were also in the vanguard of chamber music ensembles introducing audiences to composers as Bartók and Britten (who wrote his third quartet expressly for them).

Over their nearly forty years together, they made some 200 recordings – mostly for Deutsche Grammophon – and toured extensively throughout Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, and South America; at their height they were on the road for eight months of the year.

Life in the quartet was not always calm. On occasions Brainin or Lovett would storm out of rehearsal threatening never to work with the other again; when travelling they always sat separately on planes; hotels were implored to find them non-adjoining rooms. But the four men shared a devotion to each other and stuck to their vow that they would play string quartets with no other musician, and when Schidlof died a replacement was never in discussion; this sad occasion marked the end of a quartet whose universal musicianship to this day transcends any changes in style that quartet playing might have undergone since.