Emerson String Quartet
15 February 2005 - Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City
NEW YORK — When the Emerson String Quartet plays, it's like a performance
by four solo virtuosos.
Cellist David Finckel sits on a podium and violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer and violist Lawrence Dutton stand and deliver — literally keeping on their toes.
Although their gestures resemble those of four great soloists, their sound is a cohesive consensus of erudite musical opinion.
In short, if the quartet that's named after American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson had a motto, it should be "E pluribus unum" — many as one, which is also the motto of the United States.
That was the case Tuesday night, when their finely honed voice, developed over more than a quarter-century of playing together, was on display at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall.
They started with Mendelssohn's Opus 12 and ended with Opus 13. In between were works by Beethoven ("The Harp," Op. 74), Bach (Contrapunctus 1 from The Art of the Fugue and the fugue in D minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2) and another Mendelssohn (fugue from the Opus 81 No. 4 quartet).
The concert was the first of four in which the Emersons will perform the entire cycle of Mendelssohn quartets at Zankel. They also are performing these works at London's South Bank Festival in March. The Emersons are in Mendelssohn mode because they just released a four-CD album that features all the under-appreciated 19th-century German composer's quartets plus the Octet.
Like the great music they make, the Emersons' programming is a work of art.
The compositions by Bach and Beethoven presented the context for those by Mendelssohn. The Opus 12 and the Beethoven were performed side-by-side before intermission, allowing the listener to clearly hear their similarities.
They're in the same key, E-flat major. They use the slow, classical-styled introspective opening before blossoming into joyful song. Their slow movements share a sentimental lyricism that can bring tears to the eye. And they have fugal and pizzicato sections.
The pizzicatos in the Beethoven are what gave the piece its nickname — they resemble the plucking of harp strings. These arpeggiated passages are particularly tricky because Beethoven gave them to each instrument at unexpected times. The Emersons, who won one of their six Grammy awards for their recordings of Beethoven's string quartets, breezed through these passages with precision.
They also didn't flinch through the bursts of angry fugues in the Beethoven or the Puckish flings in Mendelssohn's Canzonetta movement of Opus 12 that evoke the composer's wistful Midsummer Night's Dream music.
After intermission, they started with the two Bach pieces, which offered the basis for Mendelssohn's contrapuntal genius in the Opus 13 quartet. The seven-minute fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier was arranged for string quartet by none other than Mozart.
Incredibly, Tuesday's performance was the first time it was played at a Carnegie Hall venue. It also was a Carnegie premiere for Mendelssohn's Opus 81 fugue.
The program ended with the magnificent Opus 13 quartet, which is based upon the love song "Ist es wahr?" ("Is it true?"), written when Mendelssohn was 18. After the first movement, someone shouted "Bravo" and the audience found itself unable to hold the applause until the end of the piece. But there were still three movements, in which the Emersons spanned the emotional range of tenderness, passion, agitation and longing to return home.
Before heading to our own homes, we in the audience were treated with an encore — Mendelssohn's Opus 81 Capriccio.
---
Dates of the other Emerson concerts at Zankel Hall: March 22, April 5 and April 19.
---
