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EMERSON STRING QUARTET
BEETHOVEN UNBOUND


To hear a string quartet is to eavesdrop on a conversation. When the Emerson String Quartet played at sold-out Jordan Hall on February 9, the conversation was impassioned and the exchange of ideas was visual as well as aural. All the members (except cellist David Finckel) played standing up, presumably to allow them to interact physically as much as they do musically. And that interaction is something the Emersons palpably enjoy: I’ve never seen a quartet relish the sheer act of playing together more than they did at Jordan. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate in the first chair (Lawrence Dutton is the violist), but this quartet leads itself, its members looking constantly to one another and playing as one unified voice.

Beethoven’s three "Razumovsky" Quartets (Op.59), which formed the Emerson’s program, are watersheds in his musical evolution — large-scale works that test the boundaries of the quartet form and push at the limits of conventional harmony. For all their common characteristics, they’re also an immensely diverse group of compositions, each demanding to be understood individually. The program was in many ways like a seminar, as the Emersons put a premium on texture and balance, making all the individual lines transparent and showing us how these works are put together. They also varied tone color in fascinating ways. Finckel’s cello was warm and focused in the broad melody that opens the first Quartet, but appropriately staccato — almost percussive — for the rhythm that begins the Scherzo.

Aside from the occasional missed note or bit of sour intonation, the playing was on an extraordinary level throughout the evening. The first movement of the second Quartet sounded tentative, but the Adagio was beautifully laid out and played, and any tentativeness vanished with the finale’s vehemence.

Everything came together brilliantly in the third Quartet, simultaneously the most classical and the most harmonically adventurous of the set. The Emersons made the most of the eerie, unprepared dissonances that open this work, then dug enthusiastically into the rest of the first movement. Both the Andante and the Minuet were played with a light touch, graceful and melancholy without being sentimental. The finale, a continuous burst of mad, scurrying counterpoint, was tossed off at a tempo I would have thought impossible had I not been there to see it. The rhythmic and dynamic control was wondrous. It brought the house down, and rightly so.

It’s been a Beethoven season in Boston. Visiting orchestras from Berlin and Cleveland have given us memorable accounts of the symphonies, and this concert — like the others, courtesy of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series — is the latest in a winning streak, a potent reminder of why Beethoven, still and always, is the composer of the moment.

BY DAVID WEININGER

Issue Date: February 14 - 21, 2002
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