Of all the Emerson String Quartet’s achievements during its 41-year existence, one that gives Philip Setzer special pride is its early and vigorous advocacy for the string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. These days, when performances and recordings of most of the composer’s 15 quartets proliferate, that doesn’t seem like a big deal.
I know a lot of you around here recall watching with admiration and amazement the steady rise of the Emerson String Quartet as they moved from complete unknowns to a place at the very pinnacle of the string quartet world.
The Emerson String Quartet has been a dominant fixture in the chamber-music scene for so long now that it takes a considerable leap of imagination to picture what it was like for the ensemble 40 years ago, at the beginning of their adventure. The world was a vastly different place, of course, when they embarked on that debut season in 1976—though the sense of one crisis overlapping the next remains eerily familiar.
Balakrishnan says he has tremendous respect for Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but his musical world encompasses much more. Rarely do you hear a piece of music with such a wide range of cultural references that doesn't sound like a collage. Tree of Life sounds wholly integrated — a single musical ecosystem, made from many species.
In 1969 David Balakrishnan, then a teenage violin student, attended a Jimi Hendrix concert in Los Angeles that led him to reconsider his approach to his instrument, and to music more broadly. He began learning some of Hendrix’s guitar solos on the violin, and he decided that his repertory should embrace both classical music and pop. As a composer he extended that philosophy to his own music.
The string quartet scene, too, buzzes with crossover energy. On Monday at Zankel Hall, Brooklyn Rider performs selections from its new album, “Almanac” (Mercury Classics), featuring pieces commissioned by a rainbow of musicians from the worlds of folk, indie rock and jazz.
Brooklyn Rider is pleased to announce the first personnel change of its ten-year history. Over the coming months, the group welcomes aboard cellist Michael Nicolas, thereby enabling present cellist and founding member Eric Jacobsen to focus more fully on his burgeoning conducting career. Nicolas, a former classmate of Jacobsen’s at New York’s Juilliard School, is an especially natural fit for the pathbreaking string quartet.
What’s in a name? Everything when it comes to Brooklyn Rider. Who and what the group is can be traced back to a moment some 12 years ago when the members came up with the name of their newly formed string quartet. They had settled in Brooklyn because, as violist Nicholas Cords describes it, “Brooklyn is this great artistic community. It’s a dance world, a literary world, filled with different types of music.
In his debut in a Fort Worth recital as the newest Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold medalist, Yekwon Sunwoo presented a program to boldly state that he was not all technical flash and excessive bombast, as was observed in the competition. Most of the recital, Tuesday at Bass Performance Hall, featured pieces by Mozart and Schubert that would not be out of place on an undergrad recital. Only the last piece, Ravel’s La Valse, is a showpiece and he even took a welcome laissez-faire approach to that.
With ritual solemnity, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the world’s biggest in terms of visibility and prizes, unfolds every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, where its famous namesake lived. Gold medalists go home with a cash award of $50,000, three years of concert management and bookings, a commercial recording and concert attire by Neiman Marcus. A handful of gold, silver and bronze medalists have based successful careers on their contest victories. Many have faded from view. Even so, the hope of turning up another Van Cliburn springs eternal.
