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Emerson String Quartet

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Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Street, W1U 2BF

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Description: The ensemble performs Shostakovich's String Quartet No 14 In F Sharp Op 142, and Schubert's Quartettsatz In C Minor D 703 and String Quartet In D Minor D 810, Death And The Maiden.


Phone: 0207935 2141
Website: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
Email: boxoffice@wigmore-hall.org.uk

Trains: Tube: Bond Street/Oxford Circus Overground network

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Triumph for viola from Emerson Quartet

By Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard  18.11.08
 
Emerson Quartet

Loyal and excited following: Emerson Quartet

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Wigmore Hall was packed for a lunchtime concert of late quartets by Schubert and Shostakovich, the first of three by the New York-based Emerson Quartet and broadcast live on Radio 3.

This ensemble commands a loyal and excited following here. And with the changing landscape of chamber music, their stock is ever rising. This year we have seen the end of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Alban Berg Quartet, with the Guarneris retiring shortly. Suddenly the Emersons, together for 30 years but still only middle-aged, have acquired emeritus status, deservedly.

Shostakovich’s Quartet No 13 in B flat minor, Op 138 was written while the composer was in a neurological institute in 1970. It’s one of his most stark and startling, with only three movements, urgent jazz rhythms and an instruction for the players to tap their instruments percussively — and too bad if it’s a Strad. The viola opens and closes the work in mournful elegy, acting almost as a cantor, leading his small congregation of three in heartfelt responses.

Lawrence Dutton, the group’s mighty violist, showed all the colours of this most ripe and mellifluous of instruments, soaring to violin register and swooping down to cello range.

Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel, answered with supple strength and taut rhythmic precision.

The other work was Schubert’s A minor quartet, D804 Rosamunde, a work of immense yet sweet complexity created out of the simplest means. The Emersons captured perfectly its shimmering mix of wistful, melancholy radiance.
Tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm. Information: 020 7935 2141.

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