The New Budapest Quartet was formed in 1971 and in the same year won prizes in the Haydn Competition in Vienna and the Carlo Clacchino International Concourse in Rome. In 1973 the Quartet was prizewinner in the Leo Weiner International Music Competition in Budapest. The Quartet, whose members had studied Chamber music at the Budapest Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, received post-graduate training at the final summer master course held by the world-famous Hungarian Quartet at Waterville, Maine, USA, in 1972. The public concert they gave after that occasion was banner-headlined in the press 'New Budapest Quartet Continues Tradition of the Hungarian Quartet' and music critics praised its mellow sound and purity of intonation. The Quartet might also be said to continue the tradition of the perhaps even more famous and popular Budapest Quartet which in the fifty years between 1917 and 1967, when they disbanded, 'achieved not only a high level of criticai esteem but also a remarkable popular success' (The New Grove).