★★★★★
In their almost forty years together, the Emerson String Quartet has released over 30 albums, earned nine Grammy awards, and toured the world countless times. This year, the quartet experienced its first change in personnel since 1979, as cellist David Finckel leaves the group and is replaced by Paul Watkins. But for their last recording together before the shift, the Emerson String Quartet has released one of its boldest albums to date...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-07-26
★★★★★
The Emerson Quartet finally make a welcome return to disc in this triptych of Mozart String Quartets titled "Prussian". We have the perfect ensemble for these works which need maturity and youthful exuberance in one lot to make them fully effective and we definitely get it here. K 575 is played with an energetic vigour which belies the Emerson's age and there's vitality in abundance here...
- www.classical.net
2012-04-16
★★★★★
The Emerson Quartet renders Dvorák's late string quartets, works the ensemble records for the first time in its 30-year career, with a richness of tone and romantic warmth that occasionally suggests Brahms. This is especially the case in the tender slow movements, while the faster ones benefit from the players' rhythmic fastidiousness. Throughout the set the Emerson's attention to these and numerous other details reaffirm that these are the works of an accomplished master...
- www.classicstoday.com
2010-04-29
★★★★★
I'm not a big fan of the quartet version of the original orchestral work, and the Emerson Quartet really throws down the gauntlet in this regard. Not only do these players adopt some very deliberate tempos in movements such as "Sitio", "Mulier, ecce filius tuus", and "Consummatum est", but they also include a quartet transcription of the wind-band introduction to Part 2 of the work's oratorio version (my other preferred way to enjoy it)...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Here we go again! Right after Calliope completes its 10/10-rated cycle of Mendelssohn String Quartets with the Talich Quartet, now comes this new set that also includes the Octet (overdubbed by the Emersons) on a fourth disc at no extra charge...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
This is an easy call. No less a figure than Donald Francis Tovey declared that from the performer's standpoint The Art of Fugue is undeniably keyboard music, but from the listener's it's best heard as a string quartet. It's difficult to disagree with this assessment, as the quartet medium offers perfect transparency of texture and (when played with polish and style, as here) ideal balance of contrapuntal lines...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Certainly America's greatest string quartet and inarguably one of the finest in the world, the Emerson String Quartet is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2002. And what better way to celebrate than to record an array of string quartets by Papa Haydn? "The Haydn Project", as this two-CD set is dubbed, features seven of Haydn's most celebrated, most elegant, and most charming quartets. They're arranged here in chronological order, beginning with 1772's Op...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Bach's Art of Fugue came down to us without any clear indication of the performing forces desired. The fugue was primarily a keyboard genre, and this massive, almost mystically complex extraction of well over an hour's worth of contrapuntal treatments from a simple fugue subject is most often performed on a harpsichord or organ. But the work's abstract quality has invited performances on other instruments for decades...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Deutsche Grammophon's affordable Trio series revives great recordings from the past, many long unavailable and coveted by collectors. Yet this 2004 triple-disc set of Schubert's late string quartets and the Quintet in C major, performed by the Emerson String Quartet and Mstislav Rostropovich, is identical to the 1999 release in all respects except for packaging and price, and will be superfluous to owners of the first edition...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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