Loewenguth Quartet

The Loewenguth Quartet was a string quartet musical ensemble led by the French violinist Alfred Loewenguth. It was particularly famous for performances of classical repertoire such as Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn quartets, and was active from the 1930s to the 1970s.

The founding line-up of the Loewenguth Quartet was:

From the early 1960s the desks were occupied thus:

The quartet was dissolved in 1983 at the death of the founder.

Alfred Loewenguth was born in Paris in 1911. He formed his first string quartet in 1929, but appeared in public as a violinist first in 1936.

Loewenguth began to study the violin at 8 years old, and had his first pupil when he was 12. At 16, he entered the Conservatoire National de Paris, and he set up his own Violin School when he was 17. At 19 he won the first prize at the Conservatoire, and principal medals for chamber music and solfeggio. For chamber music he was a pupil of André Tourret and Roger Ducasse. In 1959 he founded the Alfred Loewenguth Youth Orchestras, and in 1969 he set up the Music Festival of the Orangerie de Sceaux. He both founded and directed the Conservatoire of the 9th arrondissement of Paris, and taught at the Conservatoire of Stuttgart, at the Schola Cantorum de Paris, and at the Académie Internationale at Nice. Although he devoted the core of his musical work to teaching and to chamber music - with his quartet or in duo (for more than fifty years with the pianist Françoise Doreau), he also had a career as soloist. The cinematographer Benoit Jacquot devoted a documentary called "Enfance Musique" to him in 1979.

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