For immediate release: June 30, 2017
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
The Emerson String Quartet To Perform Mozart, Beethoven and Turnage, September 30
HANOVER, NH—The Emerson String Quartet—“the one indispensable quartet” (Newsday) that brings dazzling insight to both classics and new work—performs on Saturday, September 30, at 8 pm, in Spaulding Auditorium of the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Long a Hop favorite, the Emerson performs Mozart and Beethoven alongside a thrilling new work commissioned by Emerson from British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, whose music absorbs jazz elements into a contemporary classical style, with strong appeal for younger audiences.
The Emersons play with “their own brand of robust sensitivity” (NPR) and a “lush, silky and, when the foursome digs down, full-throttled symphonic sound” (Los Angeles Times). Although audiences hear the enormous experience and authority the quartet has gained over nearly 40 years of playing together, there is always a bracing freshness to the musicians’ electrifying performances. Their longevity and vitality both as performers and as mentors to younger string quartets have earned them an exalted place among chamber groups—as well as an unparalleled list of achievements, including more than 30 acclaimed recordings, nine Grammys (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, Musical America’s "Ensemble of the Year" and collaborations with many of the greatest artists of our time.
Since forming in the 1970s and naming itself for the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the quartet has honed a collective musical acumen composed of four outstanding solo voices playing in powerful sympathy to one another. The group underwent its first personnel change in 2013 when British cellist Paul Waltkins replaced David Finckel—which critics say has made a superb quartet even better. Other members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer—who alternate as first violin—and violist Lawrence Dutton.
The quartet’s visit is a fantastic learning experience as well as a listening one, wrote Filippo Ciabatti, conductor of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra. “As an orchestra conductor, I deeply believe that chamber music is one of the best ways to learn how to listen and to interact as musicians and human beings. Learning how to listen and interact is the first fundamental skill that an orchestra musician should have. Having the possibility to listen and observe the Emerson Quartet, one of the leading chamber music group in the world, is a great privilege and an artistic and educational invaluable opportunity for all of us.”
The Emerson’s program includes Mozart’s String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat Major, K. 458 (“The Hunt”), which derives its nickname from the hunting horn-like character of the opening theme and has taken on a pop culture life in numerous films; Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131, which broke the mold for string quartets of its time, unfolding without pause as a cohesive whole and marked by tremendous musical diversity; and Turnage’s Shroud, (2016), commissioned for the Emerson String Quartet by an international consortium.
Said Turnage in a press release from publisher Boosey & Hawkes, “I grew up listening to the Emerson Quartet, having been a huge fan of their many recordings since my early 20s—in particular their Beethoven set, as well as their recordings of Bartók and Shostakovich. I love their precision and fabulous interplay. It was a real honor to write a work for this ensemble.” Shroud is Turnage’s first piece for the Emerson, though he wrote a concerto in 2010 for the ensemble’s cellist, Paul Watkins.
The Emerson String Quartet’s Hop residency is funded in part by the Marion and Frederick B. Whittemore ’53, T’54 Distinguished Artists Series Fund and the Frank L. Harrington 1924 Fund No. 3.
MORE ABOUT…
Mark-Anthony Turnage (composer)
Turnage was born in England in 1960. One of the most admired and widely-performed British composers of his generation, his works skillfully blend classical and jazz idioms, modernism and tradition. In London, he studied with Oliver Knussen and John Lambert, and later, in Tanglewood, with Gunther Schuller. He also has been strongly influenced by jazz, in particular by the work of Miles Davis, and has composed works featuring jazz performers including John Scofield, Peter Erskine, John Patitucci and Joe Lovano. He has composed under associations with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English National Opera, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Turnage has composed numerous orchestral and chamber works, and three full-length operas. Greek, composed with the encouragement of Hans Werner Henze and first performed in 1988 at the Munich Biennale, is based on Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Oedipus Rex. The Silver Tassie, first performed in 2000, is based on the play by Seán O'Casey. Anna Nicole, with a libretto by Richard Thomas and first performed in 2011, relates the rise and fall of Playboy model and media celebrity Anna-Nicole Smith. Other works include Three Screaming Popes (after the paintings by Francis Bacon), Your Rockaby (a concerto for saxophone and orchestra), Yet Another Set To (a concerto for trombone and orchestra, dedicated to Christian Lindberg), and From the Wreckage (a concerto for trumpet and orchestra, written for Håkan Hardenberger). Blood on the Floor (1993–1996), for jazz quartet and large ensemble, contains nine sections with a shared theme of drug addiction, the section titled "Elegy for Andy" being a lament.
Turnage was the first Radcliffe Composer in Association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1989 until 1993 and between 2000 and 2003 was the BBC Symphony Orchestra's first Associate Composer. He was composer-in-residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2005 until 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, Turnage was a co-composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a position he held alongside Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. In Autumn 2005, he was appointed the Royal College of Music's Research Fellow in Composition. In 2015 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to music.
Turnage composed Shroud for the Emerson String Quartet in 2016 on a commission from an international consortium of sponsors: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington, Chamber Music Houston, Akron's Tuesday Musical Association, Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, and Wigmore Hall with the generous support of Peter and Sonia Field. The Emerson String Quartet premiered Shroud on September 27, 2016 at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron.
Mozart, String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat Major, K. 458 “The Hunt” is the fourth of six quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn, written between December 1782 and January 1785. The fourth quartet, composed in 1784 when Mozart was around 28 years old, is the most popular of the six and has even taken on a pop culture life in numerous films, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mystery Date, The Royal Tenenbaums and Star Trek: Insurrection. Although Mozart never referred to the quartet as "The Hunt," his contemporaries did, noting how the opening theme of the first movement evoked the horn in hunting calls.
Beethoven, String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131.
Ludwig van Beethoven completed this epic, five-movement string quartet in 1826. It is the last-composed of a trio of string quartets and Beethoven's favorite of his late quartets. He is quoted as remarking to a friend that he would find "a new manner of part-writing and, thank God, less lack of imagination than before.” Robert Schumann said that this quartet had a “grandeur...which no words can express. They seem to me to stand...on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination." Richard
Wagner described an adagio section as “surely the saddest thing ever said in notes.” About 40 minutes in length, it consists of seven movements played without a break.
The Emerson String Quartet
Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson was one of the first quartets whose violinists alternated in the first chair position. The Emerson Quartet is Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. During the spring of 2016, full-time Stony Brook faculty members Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton received the honor of Distinguished Professor, and part-time faculty members Eugene Drucker and Paul Watkins were awarded the title of Honorary Distinguished Professor. In 2015, the Quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field.
Paul Watkins, cello
Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician and conductor. Born in 1970, he was appointed at age 20 principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In his solo career he has collaborated with world renowned conductors and performs regularly with all the major British orchestras and others further afield, including with the Norwegian Radio, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony and Queensland Orchestras. He has also made eight concerto appearances at the BBC Proms, most recently with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of the cello concerto composed for him by his brother, Huw Watkins, and premiered (and was the dedicatee of) Mark-Anthony Turnage’s cello concerto. Highlights of recent seasons include concerto appearances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, and the BBC Symphony under Semyon Bychkov, a tour with the European Union Youth Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink, and his US concerto debut with the Colorado Symphony.
A dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, and joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. He is a regular guest artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and Music@Menlo, and in 2014 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. Watkins also maintains a busy career as a conductor and, since winning the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, has conducted all the major British orchestras as well as orchestras in Europe, Asia and Australia. Watkins is an exclusive recording artist with Chandos Records and his recent releases include Britten’s Cello Symphony, the Delius, Elgar, Lutoslawski and Walton cello concertos, and discs of British and American music for cello and piano with Huw Watkins. His first recording as a conductor, of the Berg and Britten violin concertos with Daniel Hope, received a Grammy nomination.
He plays a cello made by Domenico Montagnana and Matteo Goffriller in Venice, c.1730.
Eugene Drucker, violin
Drucker, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, is also an active soloist. He has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Hartford, Richmond, Omaha, Jerusalem and the Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as with the American Symphony Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Symphony. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, Drucker was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, with which he appeared as soloist several times. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Drucker has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach, reissued by Parnassus Records, and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók for Biddulph Recordings. His novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and has appeared in a German translation called Wintersonate, published by Osburg Verlag in Berlin. Drucker's compositional debut, a setting of four sonnets by Shakespeare, was premiered by baritone Andrew Nolen and the Escher String Quartet at Stony Brook in 2008; the songs have appeared as part of a two-CD release called "Stony Brook Soundings," issued by Bridge Recordings in the spring of 2010. Drucker lives in New York with his wife, cellist Roberta Cooper, and their son Julian. He plays violions made by Antonius Stradivarius (Cremona, 1686) and Samuel Zygmuntowicz (NY, NY 2002).
Philip Setzer, violin
Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with other instructors, and later at the Juilliard School. In 1967, Setzer won second prize at the Marjorie Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, DC, and in 1976 received a Bronze Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels. He has appeared with orchestras throughout the US and has also participated in Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival. Setzer has been a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. His article about those workshops appeared in The New York Times on the occasion of Isaac Stern's 80th birthday celebration. He also teaches as Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook and has given master classes at schools around the world. Setzer is the Director of the Shouse Institute, the teaching division of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit. The Noise of Time, a groundbreaking theater collaboration between the Emerson Quartet and Simon McBurney—about the life of Shostakovich—was based on Setzer’s original idea. In April of 1989, Setzer premiered Paul Epstein's Matinee Concerto, which was dedicated to and written for him. He plays a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz (NY, NY 2011).
Lawrence Dutton, violist
Dutton has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, from Mstislav Rostropovich to Reneé Fleming to Sir Paul McCartney. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous chamber music ensembles such as the Juilliard and Guarneri Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Since 2001, Dutton has been the Artistic Advisor of the Hoch Chamber Music Series, presenting three concerts at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. He has been featured on three albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci on the Concord Jazz label and with the Beaux Arts Trio recorded the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57, and the Fauré G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 45, on the Philips label. His Aspen Music Festival recording with Jan DeGaetani for Bridge records was nominated for a Grammy award. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras and has appeared as guest artist at the world’s great music festivals. With the late Isaac Stern, he had collaborated in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University and at the Robert McDuffie School for Strings at Mercer University in Georgia, Dutton began viola studies at the Eastman School, earned his bachelors and masters degrees at the Juilliard School, and has received Honorary Doctorates from numerous colleges. He plays a viola made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2003).