The Club musical de Québec will welcome Monday, at the Palais Montcalm, the Emerson Quartet for its farewell to Quebec in quartets by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Webern and Ravel.
On August 26, the American ensemble announced its dissolution, scheduled for October 2023. The farewell tour, scheduled for the time until June, displays three concerts in Canada: Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec, Monday. It is with the 1er Quartet of Mendelssohn, the Third of Brahms, the six trifles of Webern and the Quartet of Ravel than Emerson, who appears as the ” primus inter pares of the last half-century, will bow out in the province. By the time they separate, in a year’s time, the Emerson Quartet will have marked musical life for 47 years.
More than 100 concerts per year
“Since we said we were going to stop, many young people come after our concerts to tell us that they have listened to our records all their lives and that they have inspired them. Founding member, violinist Philip Setzer has fun with the expression “all their lives” when seeing these young people, he who has worked tirelessly alongside his friend and fellow violinist Eugene Drucker since the creation of the quartet in 1976.
“We played between 90 and 120 concerts a year around the world, teaching in the meantime, sums up the violinist. At this point, we reach 70 years old. It’s hard for us to run; hard on our families; hard to have had long-distance relationships with our children. »
Philip Setzer, for whom “traveling has become a pain”, sums up his state of mind: “I love my colleagues, I love music, but I want to be at home. “The pandemic experience has something to do with it: “I was at home with my wife. My daughter Katia lived with us for six months. It was all a gift. »
Musically, Philip Setzer has the “feel of having done the rounds, even if there are a number of Haydn quartets that we have not played. For the 40th anniversary of the ensemble, in 2016, he had counted 250 different works in the Emerson repertoire. “There are probably more than 300 today, including 30 world premieres. In his post-Emerson life, Setzer would perform as a trio and spend more time with his family and with younger generation musicians.
Elegance and hedonism
The aesthetic impact and longevity of the Emersons are significant in several respects. Maintaining the high level of quality over time with almost constant training can be considered a miracle. By praising, in an article published in 2015, this constancy in the excellence of the Emersons (they had then been together for 39 years), The duty evoked with dread the sounds, intonations and squeaks that emanated from the most famous of the post-war quartets, the Amadeus Quartet, after 39 years of activity, in 1986 (it was dissolved the following year). “We would not have tolerated a drop in level. If the quality had gotten the hell out of here, we would have stopped. Believe me, we are our toughest critics,” says Philip Setzer.
Aesthetically, what distinguishes the Emersons is this absolute elegance, musical and sonic, this quality of finish too – a trademark largely imposed by the record. The Alban Berg Quartet, which appeared in the 1970s, was certainly of the same solidity, but there was not the slightest trace of this sonic hedonism in its recordings.
“We were very lucky to see our media career coincide with the rise of the CD. For almost 15 years we didn’t have a recording contract and were concerned about it. » A posteriori, Philip Setzer sees this buffer period as a great opportunity. “It took time to find our bearings. If someone had said to us after a few years: “Do you want to record the Beethoven quartets?”, we would have jumped on the offer. But I’m not sure we were ready to immortalize music of this level. »
With the six Bartók’s string quartets for Deutsche Grammophon, the Emerson Quartet immediately attracted attention in 1988. “This integral has brought us great success. We had played them a lot before, including all six in one gig, which was quite unheard of. »
With the explosion of the record industry, musicians’ relationships with publishers were simple. “We were asked: ‘What do you want to record?’ They said: “The Quartets dedicated to Haydn of Mozart”. And we were told: “No problem!” This simplicity has “lead to learning a lot of repertoire and, in addition, the recording process was very formative”.
A key character
Deutsche Grammophon had associated the Emersons with an old hand in artistic direction, Max Wilcox, who had produced a number of Arthur Rubinstein records at RCA. “We had full confidence in him. He always told us: “Don’t worry about perfection, you can always make up for a mistake; stay focused on your interpretation.” »
The “perfection” of the Emerson records also comes from the fact that the musicians were aware of the durability and the challenges of recording. “A record is permanent. You record Beethoven’s string quartets and there you come to the cavatina of theOpus 130, which is probably the deepest movement ever composed, Beethoven’s favorite piece, and you will engrave this for eternity! »
This moment marked Philip Setzer. “It’s interesting to see how we recorded the cavatina. We took a take, listened to it and tore it to pieces, criticizing anything we didn’t like. We came back for a 2e taking into account everything we had noticed. There, Max Wilcox said to us: “It’s much better, don’t listen to him, do the 3 right awaye.” After a break, we listened to takes 2 and 3, corrected a bit and recorded a 4e. We then needed to cover only the middle section and the last chord. Wilcox told us, “I’m going to build the movement and if you’re not happy, you can always start over.” »
In the end, the musicians were happy with the result, but curious to know how Wilcox had arrived at this result. “He had actually chosen the 2e full take, with just a few fixes. Out of curiosity, I then went back with Max to the 4e taken, and he was absolutely right. In the 2eeverything we didn’t like from the first draft had been fixed, but then, in the 3ewe began to strive to correct by supporting such note, such ritardando, such a crescendo, such a vibrato. Everything was “a little more”, a little too much. And this exaggeration was further amplified in the 4e. Listening to the four takes again was a phenomenal lesson: you could hear the effort to achieve a result that had, in fact, already been achieved. »
Among the life lessons learned in 46 years is the effectiveness of music over words. “Looking at the place of discussion within a group, you notice that in the early years, we wasted so much time debating in order to agree on how to do something. During all this time, we could have played such a passage in ten ways and found an eleventh that would have rallied us all! »
The decision that comes today had never really crossed their minds. Not even when cellist David Finkel left in 2013: “It’s not that he wasn’t happy, but he was doing so many things and he couldn’t do everything right anymore. To replace him, Finkel had himself cited the name of Paul Watkins, adding: “You will never manage to get him. However, the Welshman Watkins was persuaded and he moved to New York with his wife and children.
To characterize the Emersons with David Finkel and the Emersons with Paul Watkins, Philip Setzer tells us: “Both are great cellists, very intelligent and honest. If you meet them, they are different, but their goals are the same. Paul has a slightly deeper, “lower” sound, while David is more of a baritone. »
As for the recipe that kept the flame alive, it can be found in the programs of the farewell tour. They vary from night to night. “It would have been easier to do less repertoire and go on tour with one or two programs. But we like challenges and also to change programs from day to day. These challenges have fed us. I think that often musicians choose solutions that are too simple and too comfortable. »