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FESTIVALFOCUS Emerson String Quartet Plays Harris Hall One Last Time
BY RUTH LEON Festival Focus Writer
Now one of the preeminent chamber ensembles in the world, after 40 years the Emerson String Quartet will hang up their instruments for good, but not before stopping at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) for one final performance in the space they inaugurated, Harris Concert Hall, on Tuesday, August 15.
The original members of the Emerson String Quartet—Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer—met at Juilliard in 1975, both violinists’ sons. They were in their early 20s when they got together and realized that they had similar, almost identical ideas about music: what was good, what wasn’t, and what they wanted their fledgling partnership to be.
They started in the quartet repertoire by alternating first and second violin parts, a practice that is usually abandoned once student days are over, but these two loved the variety and continue the practice to this day.
A couple of false starts at the beginning quickly gave way to the perfect combination when they were joined by Lawrence Dutton on viola and David Finckel on cello. And, suddenly, just like that, they were the Emerson String Quartet, universally known as “the Emersons,” choosing the name because they liked the social ideas of the American idealist and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Dutton was a student at the AMFS in 1975 and 1976 and, ever since he joined the Quartet, has revelled in the group’s annual appearances at the Festival. “I fell in love with Aspen right from the start. We made so many friends, played with such great musicians, had so much fun climbing mountains, teaching, learning from everybody. I met my wife in Aspen (violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton), and we’ve been together now for 36 years. It’s such a special place, unlike any other. It’s only right that we’re now coming back for our last season,” says Dutton.
In March of 1981, the Emersons came up with an idea that seemed crazy at the time. They decided to play all six Bartók quartets in one long concert for Bartók’s centenary—a marathon which had never been attempted before. “Everyone thought it wouldn’t work,” recalls Setzer, “but it became one of those magical evenings when people got more and more into it.”
The concert was a triumph, discussed and emulated throughout the chamber music world, even by people who weren’t there.
The Emersons followed up with cycles of Beethoven and Shostakovich and became, at the beginning of the digital era, the preferred quartet of Deutsche Grammophon for whom they have recorded virtually the whole of the quartet repertoire, including numerous original compositions written for them.
In 2012, David Finckel left the quartet to play music in other forms, usually with his wife, the pianist Wu Han—a seismic event which could easily have presaged the breakup of such a tight knit group. Instead, they were joined by Welsh-born cellist Paul Watkins, decades younger, who fit into the quartet seamlessly and brought new and innovative ideas which were welcomed by the others. “We knew immediately that Paul was one of the finest musicians we had ever played with,” says Dutton.
Those of us who have been coming to Aspen nearly as long as the Emersons have so many memories of individual concerts which astounded us. Writer and critic Harvey Steiman spotlights his particular favorites: “Already a fixture in Aspen, the Emerson Quartet played the entire set of 15 Shostakovich string quartets over eight seasons from 1999 to 2007. Deutsche Grammophon was there to record them right there in Harris Hall. The live performances are etched in my memory as textbook examples of precision and emotional detail, some of the most jaw-dropping and evocative chamber music I’ve ever been present to enjoy. The full-set album of this miracle is something I treasure.”
Now it’s nearly all over. The Emersons are retiring at the end of this year and it is difficult to imagine the chamber music world without them. It can’t be over, can it?
