Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

Across their 30 concerts at Ravinia to date, the Emerson String Quartet may have only essayed six of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 15 quartets, but in 2018 they brought the composer himself to the stage, portrayed by David Straithairn (center) in a music drama created by co-founding violinist Philip Setzer with writer/director James Glossman, to weave the tale of his decades-long quest to create an opera from Anton Chekhov’s classic story “The Black Monk.” It’s like when you go to a close friend’s house and you walk in and people just come up and hug you. That’s the welcome feeling walking onstage at Ravinia.” One facet of the Emerson that most strikingly sets it apart from oth- er quartets was its decision to use ro- tating first violinists. Drucker believes it was the first professional ensemble to institute this approach, and it is certainly the most famous one. Most quartets are anchored by a dominant first violinist like Robert Mann, who served in that role with the Juilliard Quartet from 1946 through 1997, and who went far in shaping its sound and approach. “But for other players, other temperaments, I think it absolutely makes sense to have the switching of first and second violin,” Drucker said. In the case of the Emerson, said Marie Wang, second violinist of the Avalon String Quartet, which studied with the group both at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School in 1998–2000 and at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in 1998, the alternating first violinists meant that its four players were all “very powerful individuals.” “Every quartet has a very distinctive sound, character, and identity to their interpretations,” she said, “and when it comes to the Emerson, it’s their amaz- ing brilliance of ensemble, the power of their sound, and their individualis- tic, solo kind of playing. I think it’s the norm now, and that wasn’t necessarily the case with other groups.” The group is closely identified with the 15 string quartets that span Shostakovich’s career. When it first began performing a few of his works in the 1980s and ’90s, they were still seen as radical, tough sells. The Em- erson presented the complete quartets in venues around the world starting in 2000 and released a recording of the complete set that same year, winning two Grammy Awards including one for Best Classical Album. Those land- mark undertakings helped make the works a standard part of today’s string quartet repertoire. The group similarly gained consid- erable attention for its 1990 recording of the six quartets by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. But Hoffman, who returns this summer on the Ravinia Steans Music Institute faculty, does not believe those undertakings have in any way overshadowed its work with music from other periods and styles—more than 250 pieces in all. “I never really felt that there was repertoire that they were not at home in,” he said. “That’s the force of a great string quartet, to have the musical and technical wherewithal to deal all types of music.” Along the way, the group has achieved enormous success, playing on many of the world’s most presti- gious stages and collaborating with such famed soloists as soprano Renée Fleming and pianists Evgeny Kissin and Emanuel Ax. It also has amassed a catalog of more than 40 albums, with the prestigious Deutsche Gram- mophon label issuing a 52-disc box set to mark the quartet’s 40th anniversary in 2018, and more recordings are on their way. In all, the Emerson has won nine Grammy Awards, three Gramo- phone Awards and Musical America ’s “Ensemble of the Year” Award. “We had a really good run,” Setzer said. “We’re extremely fortunate that we got along as well as we did. We’re extremely fortunate to always have good management and very lucky to able to record as much we did during the golden age of classical music recording. We couldn’t make records fast enough for Deutsche Grammophon.” The Emerson began discussing disbandment as far back as 2017, but it was not until 2019 that the group settled on 2023 as the final year. “It just felt like the right time,” Drucker said, “because we still feel like most of the time we can play our best individ- ually and as a group, and we want to PREVIOUS SPREAD: JÜRGEN FRANK RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 15 – JULY 3, 2022 82