New York City's famed Emerson String Quartet stops in Vancouver as part of its farewell tour
Friends of Chamber Music presents the quartet that Time magazine hailed as “America’s most important”
Emerson String Quartet. Photo by Jürgen Frank
Friends of Chamber Music presents Emerson
String Quartet with Eric Wilson, cellist on December 4 at 4 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse
NOT LONG AFTER the formation of New York City’s Emerson String Quartet in 1976, Vancouver’s Friends of Chamber Music sponsored the ensemble and brought the artists here for a concert. The group has gone on to earn the highest of praise from the toughest of critics, acquire the music world’s top honours, and win multiple Grammy awards, with TIME magazine once calling it “America’s greatest quartet”.
Since that first appearance here in 1979, FCM has hosted the esteemed musicians more than 30 times. When Emerson String Quartet plays in Vancouver this weekend, it will be a bittersweet moment: this will be its farewell FCM concert. The ensemble is retiring at the end of the 2023 season so that individual members can pursue solo projects. (Read Stir’s 2021 interview with the quartet here.)
FCM board member Eric Wilson played a key role in first bringing the quartet to B.C. more than four decades ago. Surely one of the longest-serving board members not just in the music sector but across industries, Wilson has spent more than 51 years assisting FCM with programming and planning. (A former chartered accountant, he believes strongly in volunteering.) He says that the level of talent and dedication of Emerson String Quartet is unequalled.
“There’s a consistency in whatever they do,” Wilson says in a phone interview with Stir. “Whether it’s Haydn or Mozart or Beethoven or Shostakovich, you just have a feeling that they grasped the essence of the music. If it’s Haydn, they have the flavour of Haydn. It it’s Mozart, they have the flavour of Mozart. When they were at Juilliard, they had access to the best training in the world.”
As for FCM’s continued efforts to present the quartet here, Wilson says: “If you have a winner, you stick with it.”
Joining Emerson String Quartet—which consists of violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, cellist Paul Watkins, and violist Paul Watkins—for its final Vancouver appearance is another Eric Wilson, one of the quartet’s founding members. An acclaimed cellist in his own right, Wilson left the ensemble in 1979 to accept a position as professor of cello at UBC. With Wilson, the quartet will perform Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, Opus 163, D956.
Also on the program are Haydn’s String Quartet in G major, Opus 33 “Russian” and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat major, Opus 133.
The quartet’s farewell season also includes performances in major concert halls across the United States and Europe, including stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Vienna, Copenhagen, Luxembourg, Cologne, and Prague.
FCM’s Wilson notes that Emerson String Quartet has been keen to return to Vancouver time and again over the years not only because the city is respected by artists worldwide but also because chamber musicians tend to stay loyal to those who supported them early in their careers. An audience is just as important to an ensemble as the other way around, Wilson says, each responding to the other.
“We’ve become such good friends,” Wilson says. “Every time they come, your audience gets to know them, and they know exactly what the Vancouver audience is like—it’s a big component for them; they’re not just playing music but engaging with the audience. The whole concert is a sad occasion but also a tribute; it’s a celebration and a farewell. I’d love to fill the hall with people who’ve never been to an Emerson concert and patrons who have been delighted by them for so long.”
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