Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

The Emerson Quartet gives its valediction as a vessel of vivid imagination By Kyle MacMillan BUDAPEST. GUARNERI. JUILLIARD. Those are the names of three of the most celebrated quartets of the modern era, and most critics, chamber-music devotees, and fellow chamber musi- cians agree that the EMERSON STRING QUARTE T deserves to be on that august list as well. “When you think back to the great quartets in the last generations,” said noted cello soloist Gary Hoffman, who has performed with the quartet, “es- pecially the American quartets, they have inherited that tradition and have definitely marked their era like those quartets did in theirs.” The Emerson Quartet announced in August 2021 that it will disband in 2023 after 47 years on the road, performing its final concert in October that year in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. As part of what has become a kind of an extended farewell tour, the group will make its culminating appearance at the Ravinia Festival on June 28. The festival figures prominently in the quartet’s history and vice ver- sa. The Emerson has presented 30 concerts during 25 seasons at Ravinia between 1985 and 2019, the fourth most of any classical ensemble behind the Budapest, Beaux Arts Trio, and Tokyo String Quartet. Conversely, Ravinia third ranks in the Emerson’s American summer festival appearances just behind Aspen and Tanglewood. “The places we have played often,” said Emerson violinist Philip Setzer, “and there are a lot of them, there’s a feeling when you walk out on stage. It’s like when you go over to a close friend’s house for dinner, and there are a lot of people there and you walk in and people just come up and hug you. That’s the sort of feeling walking out on the [Martin Theatre] stage at Ravinia. It’s a relatively small space, and there is an intimacy there and you can really see the people’s faces. We always feel welcome at Ravinia.” Setzer recalls several times walking past Ravinia’s Pavilion on the day of concert with other members of the quartet and stopping to listen for a few minutes to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. “It was always very inspiring,” he said. He also remembers a dinner in 1999 with Christoph Eschenbach, following the Emerson concert in which the famed conductor served as the keyboardist for Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478. In attendance as well was Kurt Masur, who had conducted the Chicago Sym- phony the night before, and part of the conversation focused on 20th-centu- ry Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his ambiguous relationship with Soviet authorities. The Emerson was founded at New York’s Juilliard School in 1976, with two of its original members—violinist Eugene Drucker and Setzer—who are still in the group. Violist Lawrence Dutton joined in 1977 and cellist David Finckel came along two years later. That configuration, in which the quartet did the bulk of its recordings and for which it is best known, remained the same until 2013, when Finckel left to pursue other interests and Welsh cellist Paul Watkins took his place. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 81