Emerson Quartet Farewell Tour

Performers

Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer – violins
Lawrence Dutton – viola
Paul Watkins – cello

Program (subject to change)

Beethoven String Quartet Op. 127
Schubert String Quartet in C Major, D. 956

“With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.” The Quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings and has been honored with nine Grammys (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award.
The Quartet collaborates with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works, keeping the string quartet form alive and relevant. The group has partnered in performance with such stellar soloists as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few.
During the 2021-2022 season, the Quartet performed the New York premiere of André Previn’s Penelope at Carnegie Hall, alongside soprano Renée Fleming, actress Uma Thurman and pianist Simone Dinnerstein, before reprising the program in a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In addition to touring major American venues extensively, the Quartet returned to Chamber Music Society of Louisville, where it completed the second half of a Beethoven cycle begun in spring 2020. Finally, the Quartet embarked on a six-city tour of Europe, with stops in Athens, Madrid, Pisa, Florence, Milan and London’s Southbank Centre, where it presented the Emerson in a complete Shostakovich cycle, one of the staples in its repertoire.
The Quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartok, Webern and Shostakovich, as well as multi-CD sets of the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Dvðrák. In 2018, Deutsche Grammophon issued a box of the Emerson Complete Recordings on the label. In October 2020, the group released a recording of Schumann’s three string quartets for the Pentatone label. In the preceding year, the Quartet joined forces with Grammy-winning pianist Evgeny Kissin to release their debut collaborative album for Deutsche Grammophon, recorded live at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert in 2018.