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FESTIVAL REVIEW
August 11, 2005
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By Michelle Dulak Thomson
It seemed inevitable that David Finckel, co-instigator (so to speak) of Music@Menlo, should eventually have hauled the rest of the
Emerson Quartet in with him to the festival; that it took so long as the third year was the marvel. On paper the Emersons made a
diffident appearance, shyly poking their noses in after a number of other quartets had had their say at length about an awful lot
of Beethoven. In reality, Thursday's recital at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto wasn't modest in any way. The music was
exacting in a manner that very little else can be.
The Emersons recorded the complete Beethoven quartets some years ago, so their performances of Opp. 132 and 130 might have sounded
familar to some. I haven't heard the Emersons' Beethoven recordings, but Thursday's were the sort of performances I expected from
hearing them in other music: meticulous, minutely thought-out, magnificently played.
The Emersons play, of late, standing, apart from cellist David Finckel (who sits on an elevated platform that puts him nearly head
-level with the other three), and somehow the configuration reinforces the impression of total equality that the quartet already
suggests. Why it should, it's difficult to say, given that in more traditional quartets everyone is sitting down and at the same
level; perhaps it's that in the Emersons' configuration everyone has maximum freedom and power. Cellists sit to play, but
violinists and violists don't when performing solo parts.
The impression of equality was reinforced by the performances. You notice instantly with this quartet that the two violinists (who trade off as first and second) are near-equals, and more or less simultaneously that the lower strings almost over-match them. I don't know of many quartets where the equal prowess of the players is more, as it were, insolently evident. The violist, Lawrence Dutton, stands out in particular: it is hard not to be buried in such company, but his is the most distinctive and memorable sound in the quartet, and as physically powerful as any of his colleagues'. Finckel is in some respects even more impressive, though less conspicuously so; it's only after hearing a couple dozen allegedly "top" quartets that you realize how rare a beast is a cellist that unfailingly vibrant and lively and rich-toned (and infallibly in tune). On top things are a little different. Both violinists vibrate faster and wider than the lower strings do, especially Philip Setzer, who led in Op. 132. His occasionally out-of-control sound was very nearly the only thing rationally to complain about in the A- minor Quartet, but then once you had a rational complaint, all sorts of irrational ones suggested themselves. It was something of a reminder that the Emersons' school of quartet-playing is what Europeans would call "American" and Americans "New York" (and, I suspect, cattier New Yorkers "Juilliard"). It made for an Op. 132 that would've benefited considerably by some wholesome imbalance. A touch of insanity wouldn't have hurt here and there. As quartet playing it was (predictably) marvelous, but altogether too secure. I don't want to say "safe," because that gives the wrong impression. There was nothing at all lukewarm or cautious here; it was completely fearless playing. Maybe that was what bothered me. This is music any sane musician is afraid of.
But in Op. 130 (Drucker leading), after the intermission, the Emersons were in a piece that can be played with trepidation, yet thrived without it. Even the Cavatina managed to survive its robust good health; and the three dances preceding it became charming in different ways. (I'm including the third movement here because with the Emersons it did dance, in a way that turned it and its neighbors into a suite of character-pieces reminiscent — not at all pejoratively — of Schumann. If a great performance is one that sets you thinking about connections that had never occurred to you before, this was one. As for the Grosse Fuge, which for the Emersons as for almost everyone else now is the "real" finale of Op. 130, all manner of young quartets take it on as a challenge. They should know that topping Thursday's performance would be a feat. The Emersons didn't make it look easy, which would be cheap; they made it look hard, and yet worth doing. (And the way they played it, it was emphatically worth doing.) At the same time, they had the star-shattering effrontery to nail everything. The encore was — naturally — the "second" finale to Op. 130, played so brilliantly that I realized for the first time how difficult it is in a technical sense.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America,
and The New York Times.)
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