Emerson Quartet’s Players Demonstrate Golden Touch on a Range of Repertoire

If any foursome can make the Shostakovich string quartets a part of mainstream concert life,the Emerson String Quartet can.

They released a set of all 15 quartets on CD last year, creating what was easily the biggest promotional push ever accorded these works and netting two Grammys, including best classical album.

Yet the Emerson set lives up to its buildup, offering the strongest challenge yet to the second Borodin Quartet cycle, on CD, with a combination of aggression, insight and a virtuosity that at times is breathtaking.

It would have been timely to have heard more from the Shostakovich cycle at the Emersons’ appearance at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on Sunday afternoon than just the Quartet No. 14--which they played at Caltech in fall 1999.

Nevertheless, the 14th bears reprising, for it remains one of the least-known entries in the cycle--an at first rustic, then lyrical, eventually wistful interlude between the downcast dissonances of the 13th and the bleak string of Adagios in the 15th, with references to earlier quartets (particularly the Seventh).

And the Emersons continue to crusade for the 14th with extraordinary polish, precise interplay and increasingly broader-paced depth of feeling, with cellist David Finckel relishing his extensive solo passages.

Otherwise, we heard a sampler from other Emerson strongholds--core Germanic repertory, a wisp of Americana--performed at a level that may well represent the current gold standard for quartets.

Once the Emersons warmed to the Haydn String Quartet in G minor, Opus 74, No. 3, they poured forth a lusciously rich collective tone allied with impeccable teamwork; no prissy, routine Haydn allowed here.

With violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer switching chairs after intermission, the Emersons treated Barber’s Adagio to a flexibly phrased, absolutely seamless performance. In the Beethoven Quartet in F minor, Opus 95, the Emersons took a slightly more relaxed approach than one might have expected, though with plenty of drive to spare.

A lovely rendition of the Intermezzo from Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 quartet was the encore.