AFTER PERFORMING TOGETHER for more than 25 years, the Emmy award-winning Emerson String Quartet still have the passion, commitment and sense of humour that give them, in the words of The New York Times, 'a humanity and a skill that cannot be explained ... a splendid adventure to which we owe these players our thanks'.
America's best-known quartet - comprising violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel - have been playing together since graduating from New York's Juilliard School. Because their inaugural year was 1976, the US Bicentennial, they wanted an American literary name. Other quartets had already taken 'Walden', after the Henry David Thoreau classic, and 'Concord', Thoreau's home town, where the American revolutionary war began. So, they chose poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, which they felt was euphonious.
Three of the players' fathers performed in string quartets, so the standard repertoire was relatively easy. Having studied with Oscar Shumsky and other Juilliard teachers, their technique is astonishing. Now all in their 40s, they're aware of the difference in generations, and between American and European music, but try to bridge the gaps. Next Sunday, they'll perform in Hong Kong, at City Hall.
The Emerson also commission and play modern works, from contemporary American composers Bright Sheng, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Walter Piston and Ned Rorem. 'We simply tell them to write,' says violinist Drucker. 'When we get the manuscript, it's a great surprise.'
Although playing as a string quartet, the musicians feel their different personalities, and even physical types, should be emphasised. This individuality may not always be obvious in concert, but, like Canadian composer and musician Glenn Gould, they're fascinated with recording techniques to make the different sounds clearer. Drucker, sitting in his Upper West Side apartment, says: 'I tell young quartet players, after they get through the first few years, 'Do not stereotype yourselves.' There are bound to be differences in personalities. We never try to homogenise each other. We value the individual contributions, both in terms of personality and actual sound texture,' he says. 'Hearing every single line is an objective of ours. We don't try to neutralise ourselves. No rules. We let each one do whatever the other wants to do.'
They're also socially conscious, frequently performing benefits for community organisations and schools. Just a few days after the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 2001, they gave a concert in New York, including Beethoven's Opus 131 (what Richard Wagner called 'the saddest music ever written'), Samuel Barber's Adagio and a Bartok quartet. They also have broken the mould by performing and recording composers' complete works. They see these projects as a way of tracking personal evolution, as with Beethoven, or as a diary of political, emotional and artistic torment, as with Dmitri Shostakovich.
Three composers well associated with the Emerson String Quartet - Haydn, Beethoven and Shostakovich - will make up the programme for their concert next Sunday at City Hall. The opening work is Haydn's The Lark Quartet, part of what they call their Haydn Project, which may include recording all of the composer's quartets over the next 25 years or so.