Paganini Quartet

[1][2] The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737), had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini (1782–1840).

[3] Maas happened upon four Paganini Strads at the shop of Emil Herrmann in New York, and mentioned them to Mrs. Clark, who promptly purchased the instruments for the quartet's use.

Meanwhile, another patron of chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, had sponsored violinist Henri Temianka's performance of the Beethoven violin sonata cycle at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with pianist Leonard Shure, and she also expressed interest in the project.

[4] In 1946–47, the four played all the Beethoven string quartets at the Library of Congress; people began lining up at 5:00 a.m. to purchase tickets for the series, which was sold out in an hour.

They also played the world premieres of works by Darius Milhaud, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Alberto Ginastera, and Benjamin Lees.

The Paganini Quartet (Henri Temianka, Gustave Rosseels, Charles Foidart, Lucien Laporte) plays the finale of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 4 , 1956.
A program from the first concert of the Paganini Quartet at the Library of Congress in 1946. The first three string quartets by Beethoven were performed.