The Orford String Quartet was a Canadian string quartet active from 1965 through 1991. They came to be the leading string quartet in Canada, and were well-known internationally. The summer of 1965, two Canadians that violinist Laurent Fenyves was teaching in Geneva, Andrew Dawes and Kenneth Perkins, came to study at the Orford Summer Music Camp. They formed a string quartet with Terence Helmer and Marcel Saint-Cyr. From 1965 to 1967, the quartet toured Canada on behalf of Jeunesses Musicales du Canada. The quartet continued touring after they began their association with the University of Toronto in 1972. The Orford Quartet shared first prize in a string quartet competition that the European Broadcasting Union held in 1974. They received the Canadian Music Council Award in 1978 for their recording of the Mendelssohn Quartets No. 1 and 2, and the council's Grand prix du disque in 1981 for a recording of quartets by John Beckwith and R. Murray Schafer then again in 1983 for a recording of the Beethoven string quartets.
Here we see the 2020 edition of the New Orford Quartet playing Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, 2nd movement: