The Alberni Quartet

They are based in Harlow, Essex where they were founded in the 1960s as the town's "quartet in residence", and by the mid-1970s had become world renowned. Their debut in the Carnegie Hall was well received in the New York Times, and they received positive reviews of their recordings of Schumann's piano quintet, Schubert's string quintet and Brahms' string sextets.

As well as performing a wide range of the classical string quartet repertoire from Haydn and Mozart through to Bartók and Benjamin Britten, they performed new works written for them including Alan Rawsthorne's third string quartet written for the 1965 Harlow Festival, and Nicholas Maw's first string quartet.

Benjamin Britten coached them in his own first and second string quartets (they have recorded all three of his works in the genre), and entrusted the first British performances of Dmitri Shostakovich's ninth and tenth quartets (whose scores he had acquired from the composer) to them.