Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

Tragically, the renowned composer, conductor, and pianist André Previn passed away in 2019 before completing Penelope —a monodrama to a libretto by Tom Stoppard, written for soprano and narrator with string quartet and piano—but with the help of his longtime copyist and editor, a performing score was created so it could be heard as scheduled at Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Aspen that summer, featuring soprano Renée Fleming (left) with the Emerson String Quartet and pianist Simone Dinnerstein (back). At Ravinia, actor Jennifer Ehle (not pictured) read the narrations. go out on a high note.” The three older members of the group are in their late 60s and early 70s and Watkins is 52. Considering how many of today’s quartets break up before they even reach their 25th anniversary and frequently change personnel, the Emerson’s continuation of essentially its original configuration for 47 years (34 years with Finckel as cellist) is remarkable. Hoffman believes the group made smart choices right from the start, especially about how much time they would spend together. “I always felt like the Emerson Quartet had a very healthy and intelligent way of giving each other the necessary space and freedom,” Hoffman said, “and I think that’s also one of the reasons why they stayed together so long, because they understood how that would work best and what the pitfalls were.” In the one and half or so years the Emerson has left, the quartet is working on a documentary about its history and is visiting many of the venues where it has performed in the past to say good-bye, and that is, of course, what is happening this summer at Ravinia. The quartet never performed a complete cycle of quartets by Shostakovich or Bartók at the festival, but it has presented wide panorama of works by famed composers like Beethoven, Haydn, and Schubert, plus less familiar works such as Wolfgang Rihm’s String Quar- tet No. 4 in 1992, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s String Quartet No. 2 in 1999, and Anton Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet, op. 5, in 2001. A few milestones along the way include the group’s second performance anywhere of André Previn’s Penelope (2019), a hybrid vocal-theatrical work with Fleming, and Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy (2018), a dramatic work co-created by Setzer based on the music of Shostakovich. The Emerson will end its program in June with Schubert’s String Quartet in G major, a piece it has not performed in four or five years “Ravinia will be our coming back to that piece as well as the Brahms C minor,” Drucker said. As the quartet winds down its performing, the players are having a mix of emotions. “There is a feeling that has been growing that it is the right thing for us to have decided, but it is becoming more real with every passing month, so that is not always a completely happy feeling,” Drucker said. On a recent European tour, the Emerson played Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, which it hadn’t played in eight years or so, and those were its final performances of the beloved work, which it first tack- led in 1977. Musicians develop a kind of relationship with certain pieces, he said, and he felt a pang of regret putting the printed pages of that work back into his music closet. Although the Emerson is ceasing its performances, the group along with Finckel will continue to provide guidance to young string quartets through the Emerson String Quartet Institute at Stony Brook (NY) Univer- sity. Indeed, it recently had a meeting with the chairman of the music department about the group’s teaching plans after October 2023. Several of the members have teaching affiliations with other institutions as well, includ- ing Watkins, who became a full-time professor at the Yale School of Music. In addition to the Avalon, three of whose members returned to Ravin- ia this year for the June 3 concert premiering works by the 2022 winners of the Bridges Composition Competi- tion, the Emerson has mentored such notable quartets as the St. Lawrence, Escher, and Calidore (which it part- nered with at Ravinia in 2017 for a program of larger works). Wang of the Avalon Quartet has admired the Em- erson since she, as a “geeky teenager,” saw the group perform on a cham- ber-music series in her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. “They just blew my socks off,” she said. “I just knew from then on that I really wanted to get into chamber music.” By giving up performing, Setzer said, the Emerson will have more time and energy to passing along the quar- tet legacy that was handed down to the quartet by its mentors and which it has tried to uphold during its more than four-decade existence. “That’s not just something we want to do, it’s a respon- sibility to do that,” he said. He wants to share with his students, for example, stories about composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg that he heard from famed violin pedagogue Felix Galimir. “We’re an important part of that continuing legacy,” Setzer said, “and I think we feel honored by that as much as we feel any kind of ego about it. We were in the right place at the right time.” Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications and websites as the Chicago Sun- Times , Early Music America , Opera News , and Classical Voice of North America . RUSSELL JENKINS ( SHOSTAKOVICH ); PATRICK GIPSON (WITH FLEMING) RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 83