The Emerson Quartet declines to say good-bye

Eugene Drucker, David Finckel, Lawrence Dutton and Philip Setzer - the Emerson String Quartet.

The Emerson String Quartet has a devoted Boston following, but their recent Celebrity Series concert (their 20th, not that anyone's counting) sold out, I think, for a more poignant reason: cellist David Finckel (second from left, above) recently announced he would be departing the group, so this would be the last local appearance of a beloved ensemble that had endured for over thirty years.

But the Emersons are far more devoted to philosophy than sentiment, and share a quietly cooperative ethos (Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer often trade off as first violin), so Finckel's farewell was left unmarked in Jordan Hall last weekend (even though his replacement, Paul Watkins, has already been announced).  Of course given the quartet's namesake - whose system of thought is all about transcending the flux of the world through a self-aware practice - I knew any acknowledgement of Finckel's departure would be understated.  Still, I did think it would be there - Finckel's farewell isn't quite like Setzer replacing Drucker as lead - and so I have to say its lack struck a curious note of aloof diffidence.  Which, come to think of it, has every now and then haunted the ensemble's performances, too.

Curiouser still, the program felt slightly themeless, even though it all hailed from the later days of the romantic movement (and the encore hailed from the moment it transmuted itself into modernism).  The opening choice, Dvorak's Quartet No. 9 in D Minor, seemed to slightly misfire - its sprightliness (it features a polka rather than a minuet) isn't really the Emerson's strong suit (you don't turn to them for a chuckle).  But the surprisingly rich Adagio at the work's center came off quite well, and there was likewise much to admire in the Schumann quartet (in A Major, Op. 41) that followed - particularly the surging "sighs" of the second movement.  Like much of Schumann, this quartet begins to drift a bit, but it comes to a rousing, almost manic, close, which the Emersons essayed with fervor.

The second half of the concert was entirely given over to Brahms' sprawling Quartet in A minor (Op. 51, no. 2), which always gleamed with an assured sense of ensemble - even in its thickest textures - but perhaps only intermittently caught fire.  Most of those moments actually came from Lawrence Dutton on viola, but the entire ensemble did shine in the wonderful Andante moderato - thirty years together have made a subtly balanced musical unity almost automatic for these four men - and once more the finale was truly arresting.

The crowd roared for an encore - perhaps even a solo from Finckel? But what we got instead was a curiosity - the gnomic, otherworldly third movement of Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, a work so brief (thirteen measures) and so self-consciously distilled that it all but defies interpretation at a first hearing.  It's also all but emblematic of the moment that the Viennese school over-thought itself into musical gnosis (which perhaps highlighted again the Emersons' essential introspection).  Of course, if you believe - as they apparently do - that Webern epitomizes "everything romanticism was leading to," then the choice probably resonated.

But I don't.  So I just waved David Finckel good-bye by myself.

Hails and farewells from the Emerson String Quartet

The Emerson String Quartet

Last Friday Celebrity Series welcomed the Emerson String Quartet (above) in what felt a bit like a farewell concert - although it was really only a farewell to cellist David Finckel, who will be leaving the ensemble next year (he will be replaced by Paul Watkins).  So it was no surprise the program brimmed with other farewells - it featured Haydn's farewell to the string quartet (Op. 77, No. 2), as well as what unexpectedly turned out to be Beethoven's farewell to everything, the String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, No. 16.  The concert was balanced by one big "hello" - the rolling premiere of Thomas Adès' The Four Quarters, which was commissioned for the Emersons by the Carnegie Hall Corporation.

Needless to say, the performance gave poignant, persistent evidence of why people are already feeling nostalgic toward this quartet's current line-up (which has endured for more than three decades).  The maturity, the insight, the passionate detail, the confident, unspoken sense of ensemble - it was all there, again, just as it always is with the Emersons.  The opening Haydn was particularly delightful - it played as a rich, perhaps slightly rueful emotional statement with a buoyant chuckle rippling just beneath its surface.  Propelled by Eugene Drucker on first violin, the opening Allegro moderato was exquisitely Mozartean (scholars claim it quotes the "catalogue aria" from Don Giovanni), while the following Menuetto proved deliciously playful - and the indispensable Finckel's cello all but bounced through the final Vivace assai.  To be honest, I felt this was the quartet's finest playing of the night (but then this is one of my favorite quartets, too).

Next came the Adès, which perhaps inevitably sounded a bit thin when sandwiched between late Haydn and Beethoven.  I'm generally a big fan of this challenging composer, but I have to admit - I think this may be one of his minor works; it  comes with an overt metaphoric program, but not much of a developing intellectual one.  Still, time will tell, and the audience certainly seemed to warm up to it (but then it gets better as it goes along, too).

As usual for Adès, Four Quarters is built on extremes of tone and dynamic, and depends on a certain alienated formal precision.  It's also a clear meditation, like La Mer and other works, on specific times of day; the first movement, Nightfalls, sets strange booms of sound against a kind of low, dreaming bass; something (perhaps human consciousness) is collapsing here into a sleepy drone.  In contrast, the following Morning Dew (excerpt below) is a spiky wake-up call of pizzicato effects, with plucked strings conjuring dozens of droplets precipitating out of the atmosphere.  This isn't too far from Brian-Eno-level electronica, however, where the concept does most of the heavy lifting; and the churning Days likewise plays like a self-conscious, but rather obvious, chunk of pop.  Adès only really gets down to work in the finale, The Twenty-Fifth Hour, which both hints at some mystical limit beyond the scope of our daily lives, and actually gets somewhere musically, too, thanks to a gracefully building contrapuntal development.



After Adès it was on to Beethoven, and what the master didn't realize at the time would be his last completed piece, Op. 135, No. 16. The work is famous for the inscription on its final movement, “Muss es sein? Es muss sein” (“Must it be? It must be”), which is perhaps not so much a reflection of the great composer's awareness of his impending mortality (he had a number of projects cooking at the time of his death, including a 10th symphony) as some eerily prescient, half-comical accidental portent.  The Emersons seemed to take the piece as mostly another of the composer's meditations on the pleasures and limits of classicism; with Philip Setzer on lead violin,  the Allegretto and Vivace were elegant, but not deep - depth came later, in the third movement, which touched here and there on the spiritual transcendence that illuminates the other late quartets; but this was shaken off again in a vigorous final Allegro.

After tumultous applause, the Emersons returned for a single encore, the first movement of Ives' First Quartet, generally known as the "Salvation Army" quartet.  This proved everything it should be: affectionately parodic but eventually affirming, and tossed off with the Emersons' usual low-key mastery.  It was hard to bid them (and especially cellist Finckel) farewell after that, I admit - but perhaps we're only on the verge of an exciting "hello," and another dazzling career phase, for this stellar ensemble.

Dynamic duo

There's no lovelier place to listen to classical music in the Boston area than the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport. If you doubt me, merely cast a glance northward; that's it above.  You're not always lucky enough to catch a sunset like that over Sandy Bay, but usually the music ain't too shabby (to say the least), and the famous acoustics are almost as good as the view.

So I was happy to make the trek up from Boston last Sunday to hear cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han essay a series of duets from Beethoven and Brahms.  Finckel and Han are famous as one of classical music's "power couples;" married for over twenty-five years, they are now almost as often noted for their organizational prowess as their musicianship.  They're co-directors of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society, and have founded a music festival and training program, http://www.musicatmenlo.org/. They've also found time to serve as creative directors of ArtistLed Records, and of course since 1979 Finckel has been a core member of the famous Emerson String Quartet, one of the longest-lived and most widely praised string quartets in existence (they've won 9 Grammys).

The critical line on this dynamic duo (at left, in an unfortunately vampy picture that gives no sense of their actual friendly appeal) is that their long history together - along with their truly incredible musical pedigrees (multiple awards, famous mentors, you name it) has led to a sublime musical synthesis.  But I'm afraid this listener found little evidence, at least at last Sunday's concert, to support that thesis.  And I wonder a bit whether an understandable desire to approve of everything these powerful, but clearly benevolent, classical music citizens do has led to a certain critical blindness regarding their mutual artistry.

I have to say upfront, however, that Finckel was just as sublime playing against his wife as he was when I've heard him bowing with the powerhouses of the Emerson String Quartet.  He's a cellist for the ages - at times, it seems, almost the personification of a certain intellectual lyricism that flows at a high pitch (of course) through the sonatas of Beethoven and Brahms.

Han is more problematic - at least when set against Finckel.  The contrast between the two was apparent from the moment they took the stage - Finckel preferred a dark, mod look, with a dash of quirk (a red bow tie), while Han came out in a bright, billowing number sporting every color of the rainbow (with heels striped in the entire spectrum, too - I'm dying for a pair).  Finckel played from memory, while Han worked from music (even though she must know this repertoire by heart by now); Han bubbled between numbers, while Finckel kept mum.  So it was no surprise that at the musical level, these life partners seemed to approach their program from opposing points of reference - Finckel has a subtle fluidity at his beck and call, even in the most fiendishly difficult passages, while Han favors a cleaner, more declarative attack.

In theory, that opposition sounds like it should lead to exciting sparks onstage - the problem is that Han, for all her undeniable technique, seemed unable to assert a consistent musical profile to match Finckel's.  In the opening Beethoven sonata (No. 3, Op. 69), she sometimes sounded more like a percussionist than a pianist; and the Shalin Liu has a somewhat bright response to the piano (it's ideal for strings), so at least from my and my partner's seats, the balance was off throughout, and Beethoven's dancing scherzo at times sounded like a forced march. 

To be fair, Han seemed to become aware of this problem herself; she essayed the Brahms Sonata No. 1 (Op. 38) with considerably more subtlety (perhaps this shift was also due in part to the cello's more dominant role); the exquisite minuet at its core was adorable, and she and Finckel stayed in extended synch throughout the propulsive final movement.  Beethoven's variations on Handel's "Hail the Conqu'ring Hero" from Judas Maccabaeus likewise came off well, perhaps because the work is technically challenging but thematically direct. 

But in the closing Brahms Sonata (No. 2, Op. 99), Han seemed to be wandering around, which was too bad, because Finckel's reading was probably close to ideal - suggesting in that mysterious manner great players are often able to manage the contradictory qualities of Brahms: the vision cast simultaneously forward and back, the teasing tension between the ambitious and the intimate (several themes hint at motifs from larger, or even symphonic, works).  I couldn't say that the Sonata wasn't lovely to listen to; but at the same time, I had no idea what these two were getting at; and I was reminded that musical couples, at least in artistic terms, can just as often drift apart as draw closer together.  Luckily the encore represented a final upswing - a lushly rendered slow movement from the Chopin cello sonata: straightforward rapture is clearly the dynamic this duo does best.