The LaSalle Quartet was an American string quartet founded in 1946 by first violinist Walter Levin. The group's name was attributed to an apartment on LaSalle Street in Manhattan where some of its members lived during the quartet's inception. The quartet played on a donated set of Amati instruments. It was best known for its espousal of the Second Viennese School of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, and of the European modernists who derived from that tradition. The group gave the premiere of Witold Lutosławski's String Quartet in Stockholm in 1965. György Ligeti dedicated his Second String Quartet to the group, which they premiered in Baden-Baden on December 14, 1969. The quartet was credited with the “Zemlinsky Renaissance” for performing the string quartets of Alexander Zemlinsky, winning the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis for their recording of his four string quartets. They also recorded late quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, the first two quartets by Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert's String Quintet D956 with Lynn Harrell, the first two quartets by Johannes Brahms, and the quartets of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. The group served as the quartet-in-residence at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music until its retirement in 1987.
