Orford String Quartet

The Orford String Quartet was a Canadian string quartet active from 1965 through 1991. They came to be the leading string quartet in Canada, and one of the finest in the world. "For 26 years, the Orford String Quartet was the best of its breed in Canada."

In 1951, Gilles Lefebvre launched a summer music camp for Les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada at Mont-Orford National Park in Quebec. The summer camp developed into the Orford Arts Centre, now Orford Music.Lorand Fenyves, a violinist and teacher then based in Geneva, began teaching at the music camp in 1963. The summer of 1965, two Canadians that Fenyves was teaching in Geneva, Andrew Dawes and Kenneth Perkins, came to study at Orford. With the support of Lefebvre and Fenyves, the two violinists formed a string quartet with Terence Helmer and Marcel Saint-Cyr. Their first concert was on 11 August 1965. The four performers were pleased with the performance, and decided to continue performing together. That fall, when Fenyves became a visiting teacher at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, the quartet followed him to Toronto. Fenyves took a permanent position at the university the following year. The quartet began their own association with the university in 1968, and the founding members began teaching at the Faculty of Music in 1972.

From 1965 to 1967, the quartet toured Canada on behalf of Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, with visits to France and Austria, and a debut recital at Carnegie Hall on 22 November 1967.

The quartet continued touring after they began their association with the University of Toronto. They are credited with more than 1,500 concerts across the country, premiere performances of more than 50 Canadian works, and more than 50 recordings.

The Orford Quartet shared first prize in a string quartet competition that the European Broadcasting Union held in 1974. They received the Canadian Music Council Award in 1978 for their recording of the Mendelssohn Quartets No. 1 and 2, and the council's Grand prix du disque in 1981 for a recording of quartets by Beckwith and Schafer then again in 1983 for a recording of the Beethoven string quartets.

...
Wikipedia