It was with considerable interest that many Emerson String Quartet fans heard the quartet’s performance at Meany Theater Tuesday night, the opening concert of this year’s UW World Chamber Music Series. It was the group’s first performance here with its new cellist, Paul Watkins. The Emerson had reached its worldwide eminence with personnel unchanged in 36 years: violinists Philip Setzer, Eugene Drucker, and Lawrence Dutton, plus cellist David Finckel, who has now moved on to other musical activities. (He will be back on the series in May playing in a trio with his wife, pianist Wu Han, and Setzer.)
Luckily, it took no more than a few measures of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat Major to be reassured that Watkins was up to the job. It was extraordinary to see how he has fitted seamlessly into the quartet, their tone quality a perfect match, the exact synchronization of interpretation, tempi, dynamics and phrasing that has always marked this group still present. It sounds so easy, but this kind of perfection presumes much work beforehand.
The fine rendering of the Mozart was unfortunately marred in the left quarter of Meany’s balcony by a suffocating aroma of mothballs (presumably a coat just taken out of summer storage), enough to cause serious distraction and cause several people, including this critic, to change seats immediately once the Mozart was over.
It’s easy to think of Mendelssohn as a composer who always looked on the sunny side of things, but his Quartet No. 6 in F-Minor displays his depth of emotion in the other direction. It was composed in the six months between his sister Fanny’s death of a stroke in May 1847 and his own death at 38, also of a stroke, in November that same year, and it’s a work of wild anguish.
As the Emerson played it in an electric performance, the first movement went from agitation and urgency, almost fleeing a horror, with only a few moments where the music catches a breath in calmer moments. The second, also fast, felt unsettled, disturbing, as though the underlying intense feeling has a veneer of decency which it broke through at times. There was more acceptance in the third, and the fourth had the same headlong speed of the first, but with a change in atmosphere. It was more positive, less scary.
The Emerson conveyed all this, catching up the listener as though telling a compelling tale, and the audience responded with bravos and cheers.
The group’s excellent sense of programming brought another work which showed a somewhat different side of a composer. Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G-Minor has many fewer of his frequent ominous undercurrents, this quintet being as close to apolitical as the composer gets. With pianist Craig Sheppard, the performance was well balanced, largely loud, vigorous, colorful, emphatic and cheerful, though with contrast in the slow movements.
The Emerson changes style according to the composer and the times, so that the elegant playing of the Mozart and the impassioned style of the Mendelssohn gave way to a full and earthy approach in the Shostakovich, well suited to the music.
The performance was dedicated to the memory of Toby Saks, cellist, founder and director of Seattle Chamber Music Society for 30 years and faculty member at the university, who died in August.
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Emerson String Quartet – BACH & friends