Three Last Quartets: the Emerson at Tanglewood: Haydn, Bartók, and Schubert, by Larry Wallach
Three Last Quartets: the Emerson at Tanglewood
Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, July 12, 2011
Emerson String Quartet
Haydn, Andante and Minuetto in D minor, op. 103
Bartók, Quartet no. 6
Schubert, Quartet no. 15 in G major, op. 161 (D. 887)
The Emerson Quartet has become our honored eminence grise of chamber ensembles—they have recorded much of the literature (excluding critical 20th-century repertory by Schoenberg and Carter but including the complete Shostakovich) in performances that are regarded as definitive. Their concerts have taken on the aura that I recall experiencing a generation or two ago with the Budapest and then the Guarneri Quartets. The high-mindedness of the string quartet genre performed by the ensemble known to be the best there is induces in audiences a state of meditative reverence that is sustained by beautifully polished, superbly controlled performances. There is even a moral component involved: rather than relegate one performer to a subordinate role (that of second violinists Alexander Schneider or John Dalley) the Emersons are egalitarian: Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker share first and second violin duties. Their textural preferences are for rich, even-voiced sound that easily allows the viola and cello to speak through, and the balances are almost perfectly calibrated to display the endless resourcefulness of the composers.

