Emerson String Quartet のチェロ辞任予定

近年，名演奏を聴かせてくれていたEmerson String Quartet のチェロ，David Finckelが次のシーズン後に辞任するそうです．

それが書かれていたので取り上げた評論ですが，直接には，the late quartets of Mozart and Beethoven を間を開けて３夜シリーズで取り上げる第１夜について評したモノです．
Mr. Drucker and Mr. Finckel were joined, as they have been since 1976, by the violinist Philip Setzer and the violist Lawrence Dutton — had an edge of poignant eloquence.

プログラムには，“It’s tempting to ask whether Beethoven would have composed his last works differently had he not been profoundly deaf.” Is it?と書かれていたといいます．

the concert was excellent, highlighted by a ferocious, revelatory performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in E flat (Op. 127). The harmonic wanderings and weirdly tentative ebullience of the final movement of Mozart’s Quartet in D (K. 575) aptly set up the Beethoven, which the Emerson played with lean clarity.

There was this same clean, lucid heat in the group’s performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor (Op. 132). The fluctuations between savagery and calm in the second-movement Allegro were all the more disorienting because neither extreme was overly exaggerated.
The fluctuations between savagery and calm in the second-movement Allegro were all the more disorienting because neither extreme was overly exaggerated.

The quartet played the relentlessly gorgeous central slow movement with subtle attention to detail. Here an entire history of music was implied just in the slight adjustments the group made to its vibrato. You traveled in a few seconds from the pure tone of the medieval period to the rich warmth of the 19th century, all in the context of a lithe freshness that felt very much of our own time.

なかなかユニークな演奏を展開したようですが，それは計算されたモノで，聴衆は，中世の音楽の冷たさから，19世紀音楽の暖かさを味わうことが出来たと，Emersonの演奏をたいへん高く評価しています．

微妙な表現が多くて，日本語に直しようがありませんので，あとは，どうぞご自由にご渉猟下さい．

 

 

Music Review

An Ebullient Mozart Sets Up a Ferocious Beethoven

Emerson String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall

By ZACHARY WOOLFE

Published: March 22, 2012

There is no easier sell in classical music than the late quartets of Mozart and Beethoven.

Audiences eat them up, and the program notes can be loaded with dreamily counterfactual speculations:“It’s tempting to ask whether Beethoven would have composed his last works differently had he not been profoundly deaf.” Is it?

That quotation is from notes written by Eugene Drucker, one of the violinists of the Emerson String Quartet, for the Emerson’s series of three concerts this spring at Alice Tully Hall exploring late Mozart and Beethoven. The first was on Wednesday evening.

It was also the group’s first New York performance since it was announced in February that David Finckel, its cellist, would leave the quartet after next season to devote more time to other projects. Perhaps that is one reason that Wednesday’s concert — at which Mr. Drucker and Mr. Finckel were joined, as they have been since 1976, by the violinist Philip Setzer and the violist Lawrence Dutton — had an edge of poignant eloquence.

Whatever it was, the program may have been standard, but the concert was excellent, highlighted by a ferocious, revelatory performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in E flat (Op. 127). The harmonic wanderings and weirdly tentative ebullience of the final movement of Mozart’s Quartet in D (K. 575) aptly set up the Beethoven, which the Emerson played with lean clarity.

The work’s opening Maestoso chords were less lush than direct and focused, with intimidating gaps between them, but the chords had gained grandeur when they returned after a seething Allegro section.

The third movement, a Scherzando Vivace, became in the Emerson’s reading a strange, stylized alternation of halting indecision and headlong drive. The performance was, refreshingly, neither comfortable nor comforting, without the folksy joviality that many ensembles bring to the fourth-movement Finale. Here the Emerson’s rhythms were regular: less dancing than uncertain, even a bit awkward.

There was this same clean, lucid heat in the group’s performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor (Op. 132). The fluctuations between savagery and calm in the second-movement Allegro were all the more disorienting because neither extreme was overly exaggerated.

The quartet played the relentlessly gorgeous central slow movement with subtle attention to detail. Here an entire history of music was implied just in the slight adjustments the group made to its vibrato. You traveled in a few seconds from the pure tone of the medieval period to the rich warmth of the 19th century, all in the context of a lithe freshness that felt very much of our own time.