ATHENS — The UGA Performing Arts Center will present the Emerson String Quartet at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Hodgson Concert Hall.

The award-winning ensemble will perform a noteworthy program featuring the last quartets composed by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

Formed in 1976, the Emerson String Quartet is one of the most honored string quartets in the history of classical music. The ensemble has won nine Grammy Awards, including two for Best Classical Album, which is unprecedented for a chamber music group. The quartet also has received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize, a first for a chamber ensemble.

The Emerson String Quartet takes its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate in the first chair position and are joined by violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel.

In 1988, the quartet attracted national attention with the presentation of the six Bartók quartets in a single evening for its Carnegie Hall debut. The Emerson’s subsequent release of the cycle received the 1989 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album and Best Chamber Music Performance and Gramophone magazine’s 1989 Record of the Year..

The Emerson String Quartet has been featured in New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, USA Today, Elle, Bon Appétit, Gramophone, The Strad, and Strings. The ensemble has also been the subject of two award-winning films, the nationally televised WETA-TV production In Residence at the Renwick (Emmy Award for Excellence, 1983) and Making Music: The Emerson String Quartet (First Place for Music, National Education Film Festival, 1985).

The quartet has been in residency at the Smithsonian Institution for 32 seasons, and since 2002, the Emerson has been Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University, coaching chamber music, giving master classes and providing instrumental instruction.

Tickets for the Emerson String Quartet are $37 with special discounts for UGA students. Tickets can be purchased online at pac.uga.edu or by calling the Performing Arts Center box office at 706-542-4400 or toll free at 888-289-8497.