If any group was in a position to deliver such a hefty piece of the composer’s great works on a rainy winter night, it was the Emersons. After 30 years together, and after winning eight Grammy Awards, including one this week and one for their 1997 recording of the complete Beethoven quartets, the ensemble is concentrating on Beethoven this year. Culminating a winter season spent largely with the music of this troubled, emotional, heroic composer, the Quartets' tour concludes with a “Beethoven in Context” Perspective Series at Carnegie Hall.

In his preconcert discussion, Stephen Hinton explained how the Op. 59 quartets exemplify Beethoven’s “heroic style.” A theme is presented in an unsettled or troubled context, but after a great deal of emotional musical development, the theme makes a steadier, more glorified return, like a hero returning victoriously from war. The battle takes some time, and consequently Beethoven’s heroic pieces are much longer than his earlier works. As Ralph Waldo Emerson, after whom the Quartet is named, said, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”

The Emersons deserve laurel wreaths for Saturday night’s concert. The musical battle was fought valiantly — yes, it was fought. Beethoven’s music attacks the listener and the musician, rarely relenting its assault upon the emotions. The rhythms accelerate your heartbeat. The textures hardly ever settle. The harmonic tension only resolves at the end.

The Quartet channeled all this energy, and added to it. The second movement of the first quartet, for example, was so forceful and vigorous that it bordered on rushing. The articulation was so strong that it went beyond scratching — not that this is a bad thing. When dueling with Beethoven, you must fight fire with fire. Yes, the players scratched, they bit, they sawed, they slashed — that’s the only way to match the composer.

More technically, the Emersons are not afraid to put extra bow pressure on the strings. They are not afraid to push the rhythmic pulse a little beyond what is written in the score. Their music-making is not always pretty, but Beethoven writes about life and emotion. He writes about pain, suffering, love — and anyone who has lived knows that life is not always neat and pretty.

Leading the heroic charge, surprisingly and refreshingly, were the lower voices, cellist David Finckel and violist Lawrence Dutton. Finckel seemed to initiate the energy in the Quartet, and Dutton picked up on it, and magnified it. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, although performing admirably and emotionally, seemed aloof to the lower voices’ impetus. Finckel might have been a little bit too eager — the beginning of the cello solo that opens the first quartet took a few bars to settle in. But it is better to err on this side than the other. And Dutton began the fugal last movement of the third quartet with breathtaking sound, articulation, and speed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson also said this about heroism: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.” In the case of Beethoven and the Emerson String Quartet, this has yet to be proven. Beethoven, 180 years after his death, is still very much a hero in our culture. And the Emerson String Quartet, after 30 years, is still going strong, performing heroically throughout the world. And through this heavy and lengthy concert, not one minute — not one note — was a bore.

(Beeri Moalem is a violist, teacher, writer, and composer.)

©2007 Beeri Moalem, all rights reserved