Kneisel Quartet

It continued to perform until 1917, and was generally considered the leading string quartet of its time in the United States.

In a statement announcing their retirement, Kneisel explained that henceforth he planned to devote himself to teaching and he wanted to avoid any decline in the quality of their performances.

[4][5] The quartet adopted an uncompromisingly serious approach in their playing and choice of repertoire, making "no concessions to public ignorance".

[5] In place of the popular selections and excerpts from larger works that many audiences were familiar with, they regularly played complete quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and they introduced to American audiences many compositions that are now part of the classical repertoire, but were then new and unfamiliar, including works by Brahms, Dvořák, Smetana, Franck, Debussy, Ravel, and Schoenberg.

The quartet toured widely and gave concerts in small towns across North America that had rarely, if ever, heard a professional instrumental ensemble playing serious works from the chamber repertoire.