Formed at the Juilliard School, the Isidore Quartet's real breakthrough came in 2022 with a win at the Banff International String Quartet Competition; if this album is anything to go by then they have a brilliant career ahead of them.
I spoke to the quartet's members - violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon - to find out more about the works that make the album up, and their significance to the players.
You mention being influenced - and indeed coached - by the Juilliard String Quartet in your early years as a quartet; what are the most important things that you took away from that?
Joshua McClendon: One of the most meaningful lessons that I took from studying under the JSQ is the concept of discovering the collective through the individual. Listening to recordings (or live performances, of course!) of the Juilliard Quartet across its history, from the mid-twentieth century to its current iteration, each member’s artistic personality fully comes through. Despite this individuality, their unified sound and artistic vision remain cohesive. This philosophy has become integral to our approach. Rather than striving to become carbon-copies of one another and obsessing over matching every minute detail, we strive for a fuller palette of sound and color by allowing space for each member’s full artistic voice. In doing so, we fully embrace individuality not as a contrast to unity, but as the very means of achieving a deeper, more three-dimensional concept of sound and artistry.
For many people, your first appearance on their radar will have been that Banff win in 2022. What was that like - what pieces did you perform in each of the specialist rounds?
Adrian Steele: Banff was a truly special experience for us. Since all the quartets perform in every round except the finals, there’s an opportunity to showcase a wide breadth of artistry, which gives the whole competition more of a festival-like atmosphere.
In the first round, we paired Haydn’s Op. 20, No. 2 with Billy Childs’s String Quartet No. 2, Awakening, which marked the beginning of our close relationship with Billy’s incredible quartet writing. For the Romantic Round, we performed Brahms’s A minor Quartet, Op. 51, No. 2. In the commissioned work round, we played Dinuk Wijeratne’s The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini. For the recital round, we paired Bartók’s First String Quartet with the first four fugues from Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and we closed the competition with Beethoven’s Op. 132 in the finals.
"We strive for a fuller palette of sound and color by allowing space for each member’s full artistic voice."
How did you decide what repertoire to include on this, your debut album?
Phoenix Avalon: For our debut album, we wanted to celebrate the spirit of chamber music while capturing the excitement and sense of discovery that defines this early stage of our career. At the same time, we wanted to honor the mentors who have shaped us from the very beginning.
We chose Haydn’s Op. 20, No. 2 because it was one of the first pieces we ever played together, and one of the works we brought to Banff. For us, it represents a journey — starting as a newly formed ensemble and evolving through years of performing it on tour. It’s a piece full of joy and exploration, but also one that reveals deeper wisdom over time, which makes it endlessly rewarding.
The album is dedicated to the memory of our mentor Joel Krosnick, so we wanted to include a work that reflected his love of life and boundless curiosity for great music. Mendelssohn’s Op. 44, No. 3 felt like a natural choice. Written shortly after his marriage, it radiates excitement for the future, along with an emotional depth that comes from a place of profound love. For us, it speaks both to our own sense of possibility and to the lifelong devotion to music that Joel instilled in his students.
With Barber’s Adagio, we wanted to offer a moment of stillness and reflection. The piece carries a deep sense of tragedy, but also reminds us that such beauty exists because we have known joy. Allowing the Mendelssohn to emerge out of that darkness highlights the duality of human experience and the expressive range of the quartet medium.
We close the album with Florence Price’s Adoration, which felt like the perfect final gesture — a work of simplicity, warmth, and gratitude. In many ways, it serves as a quiet “thank you.”
Does the album reflect your normal ‘diet’ as a quartet, in terms of the mix of older and relatively recent works?
Adrian Steele: This album perhaps skews a bit more traditional in its repertoire, yet we are always trying to discover and represent the broad range of what is possible for the quartet. We are looking forward to exploring much more contemporary repertoire in future recordings to reflect our live performance programming. We aim to bridge the gap between Bach all the way to Billy Childs, which is an almost impossibly large task, but one that we are excited to take on!
The slow movement of Barber’s string quartet has since become famous in arrangements for string orchestra and chorus; what do you think this original version for just four players offers that those other (arguably more widely-heard, nowadays) ones don’t?
Devin Moore: The original quartet version has an intimacy and vulnerability that’s hard to replicate in larger arrangements. There’s a rawness to the sound — especially at the climax, where all four players are in extremely high registers — that brings a sense of physical and emotional strain to the surface.
Even though the writing has a symphonic breadth, experiencing it through just four voices makes the music feel more exposed, more human. That closeness allows the struggle and desperation within the piece to come through with particular intensity. It also places a unique responsibility on each player, as every line feels both independent and essential to the emotional arc, creating a kind of shared fragility that can be incredibly powerful in performance.
What’s next for you after this, recording-wise?
Devin Moore: We would love to record the complete string quartets of Billy Childs. We recently had the privilege of premiering his Fourth String Quartet, American Mosaic, which was commissioned for us this year. His music has been part of our repertoire from the very beginning, and it’s deeply woven into our identity as an ensemble. There’s such a richness and individuality in his writing for quartet — each piece feels like it inhabits its own world while still speaking a shared musical language — and we feel a strong sense of connection and responsibility to that body of work.
Isidore String Quartet
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
