San Francisco Classical Voice

January 29, 1999

The Emerson String Quartet began its program on Wednesday in Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium with a peppy "overture," and then got serious. That opener was Mozart's Quartet in F Major, K. 590, a late and light-hearted composition that gave the four artists a zippy warm-up and opportunities to demonstrate the virtuosity, precision and ensemble that are part of what make this group outstanding and so popular.

But the Sibelius Quartet in D minor, Op. 56, and the Dvorak Quartet in C Major, Op. 61, were what counted most on the evening's program. In these the quartet also showed the rest of its personality, namely its carefully chosen dramatic contrasts, bold gestures, and the assertiveness that some listeners find disconcerting.

Sibelius played the violin early in his life, but wrote this too- seldom-performed quartet in 1909, about half way through his composing career. It dates from the year he began his brooding Symphony No. 4 in A minor, and, as played by the Emerson the quartet, it often had the flavor of that symphony in its moods, sonorities and flow.

From the first bars, the Emerson's emotionally probing performance was a jolting contrast to the frivolity and brightness of the Mozart. This piece surges with waves of truncated themes that the Emerson four sounded out together with a rich fullness or passed effortlessly from one to another.

As played by the Emerson ensemble, the long third movement, Adagio di molto, which gave the quartet its appellation "Intimate Voices," might as aptly have been called "Passionate Voices." The Emerson brought a surging intensity and Wagnerian resonance and tenderness to much of the movement that set the sonorous music rising and falling to a final spent silence.

The listener who comes to Dvorak's C Major quartet expecting folk tunes and Czech nationalism will be surprised and perhaps disappointed. Some have said the composer here left his element to pretend he is Viennese, only to wind up a second-class Beethoven. But the audience in the packed Dinkelspiel didn't seem distracted by such parochial or pretentious perspectives.

The quartet was commissioned by a Viennese artist, and Dvorak in significant degree adopted the Viennese style, but what he did so well within that framework is what makes this such a beautiful and, particularly as played by the Emerson, exciting and moving piece of music.

The Emerson emphasized Dvorak's many rhythmic, dynamic and thematic contrasts, which became vehicles for its virtuosity and interpretive insights. As in other pieces, Lawrence Dutton leaned his viola into the audience and played with a lovely lyricism and intensity, while David Finckel (from the Mozart on) boldly bowed and plucked out the cello lines.

The four Emerson artists are ensemble players who nonetheless often stand out as individuals, rather like members of a basketball team, for when one takes the ball for a moment and then passes it on, the eye and the ear follow even as the mind focuses on the performance as a whole.

In part the individuals stand out because the group likes robust musical contrasts that thrust one player after another briefly but forcefully into the foreground. But the individuals are also distinguished by their mannerisms: the more straight-faced violinists, Eugene Drucker (first chair in the Mozart and Sibelius) and Philip Setzer (first in the Dvorak), who rise slightly from their chairs in lively passages, and the more frequently outgoing violist Dutton and cellist Finckel.

The concert ended with one encore, Schubert's Quartettsatz, with its singing and growling passages in the four strings, Drucker performing brilliantly in the first chair.

(William Ratliff, a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, is a former music critic of The Peninsula Times Tribune and stringer for The Los Angeles Times and Opera News.)

©1998 William Ratliff, all rights reserved