Emerson String Quartet
Emerson String Quartet, an ensemble with an unparalleled list of achievements, makes its first appearance at Penn State in six years with a program featuring works by Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert—plus a piece by Lowell Liebermann co-commissioned by the Center for the Performing Arts through its membership in Music Accord. Founded in 1976 and based in New York City, the quartet has recorded more than thirty albums, earned nine Grammy (including two for best classical album) and three Gramophone awards, won the Avery Fisher Prize, been named Musical America’s ensemble of the year, and collaborated with many of the great artists of our time. The Emerson was one of the first quartets formed with its violinists alternating in the first chair position. In 2002, the ensemble began to perform while standing, with the cellist seated on a riser, for most of its concerts. Cellist Paul Watkins, who joined the quartet in 2013, has infused the ensemble with a warm, rich tone and a palpable joy in the collaborative process. “One of the characteristics of the Emerson Quartet is that its players (the violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer and the violist Lawrence Dutton in addition, now, to Mr. Watkins) all have the ability and the instruments to produce a sweet and glossy sound—but do so sparingly,” writes a New York Times reviewer. “Instead, they establish a chromatic scale of timbres that range from dry and tart over clean and zesty all the way to lustrous and singing.” The Penn State program includes Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, Sunrise; Schubert’s String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, Op. 29, Rosamunde; and Liebermann’s String Quartet No. 5, Op. 126.
The concert is part of an Emerson residency at Penn State that also features Liebermann.
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sponsor
Designer’s Studio
support provided by
Norma and Ralph Condee Chamber Music Endowment
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WPSU