The Juilliard String Quartet is, in my opinion, the most famous ensemble of its kind this side of Budapest.

But fame can be misleading. Second violinist Ron Copes remembers telling someone what he did, and the response was, “Oh, I know you guys—Arnold Steinhardt stayed in our house once.”

Steinhardt isn’t a member of the quartet, and the musicians do well enough to afford hotels. “People recognize the name, but they don’t really know the group,” says Copes.

The Juilliard String Quartet will be playing this Sunday at 3pm—without Arnold Steinhardt—at Carmel’s Sunset Center, as part of Chamber Music Monterey Bay‘s season. Copes will be joined on stage by violinist Joel Smirnoff, violist Samuel Rhodes and cellist Joel Krosnick.

Founded in 1949 at New York’s renowned Juilliard School of Music, the group is now in its second generation. In 1997 Copes, a former instructor at UC Santa Barbara and a member of the Oakland-based Dunsmuir Piano Quartet, replaced Smirnoff at the second violin position while Smirnoff took over for the retiring Robert Mann, the last remaining original member of the quartet.

As faculty at Juilliard, all the group members teach, and over the years have been seminal figures in the formation of many other quartets including the Alexander, American, Emerson, La Salle, New World, and Mendelssohn. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the group’s tenure as the quartet–in-residence at the Library of Congress. One of the perks of this gig is that they get to play on the Library’s highly prized Stradivari instruments.

Known for its unfailing dedication to performing works by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and other masters, the quartet plays with the kind of precision and clarity of tone that would make the original composers proud. The ensemble has more than 100 recordings under their collective belts including their most recent release, a CD of Mendelssohn’s String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. Over the years their recordings of the complete Beethoven, Schoenberg, Debussy and Ravel Quartets have all garnered Grammy Awards.

In addition to the classics, the Juilliard’s vast repertoire of more than 500 pieces of music includes compositions by the visionary American Elliott Carter and the Viennese-born Arnold Schoenberg.

The group’s Carmel concert will feature music by the 20th-century master Anton Webern, in addition to Mozart’s three “Prussian” quartets and Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 11 in C Major.

“The main thing about listening to Webern is that you hear an elegance of phrase,” says Copes. “You hear a remarkable beauty of sound and it’s sometimes eerie, sometimes very distinctive in terms of color in a way that we won’t explore in Mozart because they’re very specific techniques—playing near the bridge, playing with the wood of the bow, things like that.”

While Copes was not sure how audiences would react to 20 minutes of Weburn, he’s been “flabbergasted” by the reception so far. “The audience tends to be very quiet, with a stunning sense of attention,” he says.

Whether they’re breathing new life into an under-appreciated classic or performing new music, the members of the Juilliard Quartet like to approach each piece with the same respect. “It’s the assumption that every new work that we play could easily be a masterwork established in a repertoire,” says Copes. “Whether it is, of course, is something else, but we approach it with that
attitude.”

The Juilliard String Quartet performs Sunday, Feb. 8 at 3pm at the Sunset Center. $28-38/adults, $15/students, 625-2212 or www.chambermusicmontereybay.org.