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Emerson String Quartet

Emerson String Quartet - The New Complete Edition

SHOSTAKOVICH The String Quartets Nos. 7 - 10 / Emerson String Quartet

Shostakovich: The String Quartets Nos. 7 - 10

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I. Allegretto

II. Lento

III. Allegro

I. Largo

II. Allegro molto

III. Allegretto

IV. Largo

V. Largo

I. Moderato con moto

II. Adagio

IV. Adagio

V. Allegro

I. Andante con moto

II. Allegretto furioso

III. Adagio

IV. Allegretto - Andante

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Presto Classical - Streaming

Presto Classical - Digital

Emerson String Quartet - Story Banner

Mendelssohn: Octet, Op.20; String Quartet, Op.80

MENDELSSOHN Octet / Emerson String Quartet

Kammermusik

KLASSIK

Sinfonische Musik/Orchester

Wiederveröffentlichungen / Raritäten Klassik

Chöre/Kirchenmusik

Opern

Klassische Solo-Instrumente

Musik für Kinder

FAMILIE

Klassik für Kinder

Oktett · Octet op. 20 Streichquartett · String Quartet op. 80 4 Stücke für Streichquartett 4 Pieces for String Quartet op. 81

Emerson String Quartet - The New Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon

EMERSON STRING QUARTET The New Complete Recordings on DG

Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon

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The Emerson String Quartet, formed in 1976, will call a halt to its long and illustrious performing career in October 2023. DG is marking this momentous

The Emerson String Quartet, formed in 1976, will call a halt to its long and illustrious performing career in October 2023. DG is marking this momentous occasion by issuing an expanded edition of the Quartet&rsquo;s complete recordings for the label. Out today, it is available as a 55 CD box set. Originally issued in 2016 to mark the Emersons&rsquo; 40th anniversary, the complete edition now also includes two more recent albums: Chaconnes and Fantasias &ndash; Music of Britten and Purcell and The New York Concert, recorded live with Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall.&nbsp;

Emerson String Quartet - Bach, J.S.: The Art of Fugue Dolby Atmos Cover

BACH Art of Fugue / Emerson String Quartet

Bach, J.S.: The Art of Fugue

Element 1

Die Kunst der Fuge The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (für Streichquartett · for String Quartet)

Interview: Who are the Emersons?

Interview: Octet - Each player uses two instruments

Performance: Mendelssohn Octet

Interview: Recording the Octet with four musicians

Interview: The chemistry of the Quartet

Performance: Bach: The Art Of Fugue, BWV 1080 - Version For String Quartet: Contrapunctus 1

Videos

From the Archive - Photos from the Emerson String Quartet’s career

Biography

Eugene Drucker, violin Philip Setzer, violin Lawrence Dutton, viola David Finckel, cello
The Emerson String Quartet was formed at the Juilliard School in 1976. It takes its name from the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803&ndash;1882). Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer have shared the responsibilities of first and second violin since the Quartet&rsquo;s inception, with Lawrence Dutton becoming the ESQ violist in 1977, and David Finckel becoming the ensemble&rsquo;s cellist in 1979. Ever since the quartet&rsquo;s first appearances at the Vermont Music Festival in 1977 it has been acclaimed for its insightful performances, dynamic artistry and technical mastery. Important commissions and premieres include compositions by Mario Davidovsky (1980), Ronald Caltabiano (1981), Maurice Wright (1983), George Tsontakis (1984), Gunther Schuller (1986), John Harbison (1987), Richard Danielpour (1988), Richard Wernick (1991), Wolfgang Rihm (1993), Paul Epstein (1994), Ned Rorem (1995), Edgar Meyer (1995), Ellen Taaffe Zwillich (1998), Joan Tower (2003), and Andr&eacute; Previn (2003). The ensemble has won numerous awards, including the prestigious&nbsp;Naumburg Award&nbsp;(USA) for Chamber Music in 1978, eight&nbsp;Grammy&nbsp;awards, and three&nbsp;Gramophone&nbsp;awards.
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1979
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First annual season of recitals at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
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1980
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First performances of the Complete Beethoven Quartets
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1981
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First performs complete cycle of Bart&oacute;k Quartets on one evening at Lincoln Cen&not;ter in New York, a feat repeated since around the globe; the quartet members join teaching faculty of University of Hartford&rsquo;s Hartt School of Music. ESQ begins a tradition of playing benefit concerts for various causes ranging from nuclear disarmament to the fight against AIDS, world hunger, and children&rsquo;s diseases
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1983
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First European tour, with regular tours there ever since
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1985
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First concerts in Japan and the Far East
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1987
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Beginning of exclusive association with Deutsche Grammophon &ndash; first release: Schubert&rsquo;s&nbsp;Death and the Maiden&nbsp;and Beethoven&rsquo;s&nbsp;Serioso&nbsp;Quartets; Salzburg Festival debut; other festivals at which the ESQ appears regularly include Ravinia, Tanglewood, Aspen, Mostly Mozart (Lincoln Center, New York), Lucerne, the Schubertiade in Feldkirch, Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin
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1998/99
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Their Carnegie Hall debut recital with complete Bart&oacute;k Quartets cycle is recorded live, winning a&nbsp;Gramophone&nbsp;award both as &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Recording&rdquo; and &ldquo;Record of the Year&rdquo;. It also wins a&nbsp;Grammy&nbsp;for &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Performance&rdquo; and is the first chamber-music recording ever to win the&nbsp;Grammy&nbsp;for &ldquo;Best Classical Album&rdquo;
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1991
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Mozart-year release of the 6 &ldquo;Haydn&rdquo; Quartets and the Mozart Flute Quartets (with Carol Wincenc)
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1992
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CD releases include American Originals (quartets by Ives and Barber) (Grammy&nbsp;for &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Performance&rdquo;), and the Schubert C major String Quintet (with Mstislav Rostropovich)
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1993
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CD Release of CD American Contemporaries &ndash; quartets by John Harbison, Richard Wernick, and Gunther Schuller
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1994
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Release of CD with music for piano and strings by Dvor&aacute;k (with Menahem Pressler); ESQ receives Medal for Distinguished Service from the University of Hartford, Connecticut
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1995
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CD releases: Webern&rsquo;s Complete Works for String Quartet, and music for piano and strings by Schumann (with Menahem Pressler); individual ESQ members awarded honorary doctorates by Middlebury College, Vermont
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1997
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CD release of the complete Beethoven Quartets (Grammy&nbsp;for &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Album&rdquo;, 1998)
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1999
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CD release of Clarinet Quintets by Mozart and Brahms (with David Shifrin)
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2000
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CD release of the Shostakovich Quartets (Grammy&nbsp;for &ldquo;Best Classical Album&rdquo; and for &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Performance&rdquo;, as well as&nbsp;Record Academy Prize, Tokyo and&nbsp;Gramophone&nbsp;Award for &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Recording&rdquo;, 2000); ESQ collaborates with celebrated director Simon McBurney in a multimedia work entitled&nbsp;The Noise of Time, featuring the Shostakovich 15th Quartet and blending film, movement, taped readings, projection and live performance by the ESQ; named &ldquo;Ensemble of the Year 2000&rdquo; by the periodical Musical America
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2001/02
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ESQ 25th Anniversary Season begins in July 2001: ten performances of&nbsp;The Noise of Time&nbsp;at the Barbican Centre, with further performances in Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, and Vienna. ESQ featured at the South Bank Centre, London, and Lincoln Center, New York, in three concerts devoted to works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Bart&oacute;k. US premiere of Rihm&rsquo;s&nbsp;Dithyrambe&nbsp;for Quartet and Orchestra. CD release 2001: the &ldquo;Haydn Project&rdquo;, a cross-section of the master&rsquo;s works on two CDs
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2002/03
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Concerts in major musical centres of North America and Europe, the Emersons become quartet-in-residence at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. CD release:&nbsp;The Emerson Encores&nbsp;with works ranging from Beethoven to Shostakovich
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2003
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Summer festival appearances include Schwetzingen, Ravinia, Aspen, Tanglewood, Rheingau, Salzburg, Lucerne, Ludwigsburg and Lincoln Center&rsquo;s Mostly Mozart; CD releases: Bach&rsquo;s&nbsp;The Art of Fugue, Edgar Meyer&rsquo;s Quintet (accompanied by the composer) and Ned Rorem&rsquo;s Quartet
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2004
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CD releases include Haydn&rsquo;s&nbsp;Seven Last Words of Christ. The quartet receives the&nbsp;Avery Fisher Prize&nbsp;from Lincoln Center
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2005
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CD release of Mendelssohn&rsquo;s Complete Works for String Quartet (plus a performance of the Octet with the ESQ playing all eight parts) to great acclaim (Grammy, &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Performance&rdquo;, 2005). Concerts in North America and Europe at festivals and many universities; plus further performances of&nbsp;The Noise of Time&nbsp;in Moscow and Paris
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2006
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Appearances throughout North America and Europe, including the complete Shostakovich cycle in New York and London; the CD entitled&nbsp;Intimate Voices, with works by Grieg, Nielsen and Sibelius, wins their eighth&nbsp;Grammy, &ldquo;Best Chamber Music Performance&rdquo; 2007
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2007
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Engagements throughout the USA, in Canada, Spain, Germany, England, Czech Republic, France, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden. Festival appearances include the Schubertiade, Salzburg Festival, Menuhin Festival (Gstaad), Tivoli (Copenhagen), and the Mozart Festival (Bath, UK). The quartet celebrates its 30th anniversary season with an eight-concert Perpectives series entitled &ldquo;Beethoven in Context&rdquo; in New York&rsquo;s Carnegie Hall. For this series, Kaija Saariaho has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall to compose a quartet for them in honour of the project and their 30th anniversary. The ensemble celebrates 20 years of exclusivity with Deutsche Grammophon with the release of Brahms&rsquo;s Piano Quintet (with Leon Fleischer) and the String Quartets nos. 1&ndash;3 in the spring
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2008
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The Quartet makes several tours of the USA, and also appears in Canada. In Europe it gives its first appearance at the Cit&eacute; de la musique in Paris, three concerts at London&rsquo;s Queen Elizabeth Hall, a three-concert series at London&rsquo;s Wigmore Hall, and a pair of concerts at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, with additional concerts in Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Italy. The Quartet continues its residency at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, now in its 28th sold-out season. The Emerson&rsquo;s world-premiere recording of four- and five-part fugues from Bach&rsquo;s&nbsp;Well-Tempered Clavier, arranged for string quartet by Mozart and his contemporary, the Austrian composer Emanuel Aloys F&ouml;rster, is scheduled for release in spring
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2009
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The year begins with concerts in Israel followed by appearances in the USA and a tour of Europe. During the further course of the year the ESQ gives further concerts in the USA, Germany, Denmark, Spain, South America, the UK, and at the Salzburg and Prague Festivals. Their new audio release, Intimate Letters with works by Jan&aacute;ček and Martinů, is scheduled for the spring
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 1/2009

A Meeting of Minds

The prospect of an evening of chamber music made by Evgeny Kissin and the Emerson String Quartet was bound to raise the highest expectations. But what would their first collaboration bring? That question was answered in full over the course of eight concerts given in January and April 2018 in Baden-Baden, Paris, Munich, Essen, Vienna, Chicago, Boston and New York. To say that the results &ndash; projected into music by Mozart, Faur&eacute; and Dvoř&aacute;k &ndash; were special would be an understatement, as can be heard in The New York Concert, Deutsche Grammophon&rsquo;s recording of the tour&rsquo;s final date at Carnegie Hall.&nbsp;The New York Concert is <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/KissinEmerson">available now.</a>

Emerson String Quartet. Schostakovich String Quartets 7-10

Shostakovich: The String Quartets

SHOSTAKOVICH The String Quartets Emerson

The New York Concert

THE NEW YORK CONCERT Kissin

Peaceful Bach

BACH 333 - Peaceful Bach

Journey’s End:  DG Celebrates the Enduring Legacy of the Emerson String Quartet

Deutsche Grammophon hat die 2016 erschienene und inzwischen vergriffene Gesamtedition des Emerson String Quartet neu aufgelegt. Die aktuelle Ausgabe ist um brillante Aufnahmen j&uuml;ngeren Datums erg&auml;nzt.

Any history of chamber music during the past half century would be incomplete without a long chapter devoted to the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet. The revered New York-based ensemble, which was formed at the Juilliard School in 1976 and began working with Deutsche Grammophon in 1987, will call a halt to its long and illustrious performing career in late October 2023. DG will mark this momentous occasion by issuing an expanded edition of the Quartet&rsquo;s complete recordings for the label. Documenting the peerless quality and striking breadth of the Emersons&rsquo; work, the edition will be available both as a 55‑CD box set and digitally, including a special Dolby Atmos version of The Art of Fugue. Emerson String Quartet &ndash; The New Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon will be released today, 13&nbsp;January 2023. Further DG catalogue projects will follow during this farewell season, including the reissue of the ESQ&rsquo;s multi-award-winning Shostakovich cycle as a 5-CD set.
Originally issued in 2016 to mark the Emersons&rsquo; 40th anniversary, the complete edition now also includes two more recent albums. Chaconnes and Fantasias &ndash; Music of Britten and Purcell, was released in 2017 (on Decca Gold), while The New York Concert, recorded live with Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall and featuring works by Mozart, Faur&eacute; and Dvoř&aacute;k, was released by DG in 2019.
At the heart of the complete edition are the ensemble&rsquo;s hugely acclaimed cycles of the string quartets of Bart&oacute;k, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, winners between them of no fewer than six Grammys and two Gramophone Awards; Mozart&rsquo;s &ldquo;Haydn&rdquo; Quartets; and the Brahms Quartets and Piano Quintet, this last with Leon Fleisher. The latter is just one of the many eminent collaborators featured here, with others including Ren&eacute;e Fleming (Berg&rsquo;s Lyric Suite and Wellesz&rsquo;s Sonnets from the Portuguese); Thomas Hampson (Barber&rsquo;s Dover Beach); Mstislav Rostropovich (the Schubert String Quintet); and David Shifrin (the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets).
Further highlights of this abundant and wide-ranging collection include interpretations of J.S. Bach&rsquo;s The Art of Fugue and transcriptions of fugues from The Well-tempered Clavier; the complete Webern for string quartet; and Emerson commissions from John Harbison, Edgar Meyer, Ned Rorem, Gunther Schuller and Richard Wernick. Not to mention three further Grammy-winning albums &ndash; quartets by Ives and Barber; Intimate Voices (Grieg, Sibelius, Nielsen); and Intimate Letters (Jan&aacute;ček, Martinů).
&ldquo;For close to three decades, it was a privilege to document our interpretations of such a wide spectrum of music for Deutsche Grammophon,&rdquo; says founder member Eugene Drucker. &ldquo;Our DG discography reaches back to key works written before the invention of the string quartet (the two discs of Bach transcriptions, now augmented by four Fantasias by Purcell and Britten&rsquo;s arrangement of his Chacony), extends through most of the pillars of quartet repertoire from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and explores new works by five contemporary American composers. We proudly recall the distinguished guests with whom we had the opportunity to perform and record during those years, an illustrious list to which we can now add the superstar piano virtuoso Evgeny Kissin.&rdquo;
Recent highlights of the Emerson String Quartet&rsquo;s packed schedule include a recital at Vienna&rsquo;s Musikverein, the completion of their Shostakovich cycle at London&rsquo;s Southbank Centre, and dates in Aarhus, Cologne, Luxembourg, Hamburg and Castell&oacute;n. Concerts in North America follow in December and January, with their final European recitals taking place next March and October. On 22&nbsp;October 2023 they will give their last ever concert, for which they will join forces once again with former long-serving ESQ cellist David Finckel for a valedictory performance of Schubert&rsquo;s String Quintet.
Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton and both David Finckel and his successor Paul Watkins will thereafter focus on individual projects and their collective mentorship of younger generations of musicians through the Emerson String Quartet Institute at Stony Brook University, New York.

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Title

Emerson String Quartet - Overview | Deutsche Grammophon

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

EMERSON STRING QUARTET

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Videos