Believing out loud

THE EMERSON QUARTET talks to BILL NEWMAN

Live or on disc, one marvels at their marvellous clarity and articulation - whatever the tempi indication - that throws into relief inner colours and nuances. How much does superb musical teamwork relate to past traditions? Cellist David Finckel hearkens back to the great string players.

'Many never heard Kreisler and Szigeti and their styles of playing, but it's nice to know that people are out there listening, trying to understand what we are trying to do, more. Isn't that true? They are not going to understand what a portamento is.' Szigeti in his final recording years was the keenest musicologist I had then come across, bowing, fingering and phrasing in order to get the soul out of music. How many violinists can perpetuate his authenticity? Violist Lawrence Dutton takes up the argument. 'Boy! Our heroes are that older generation. We are lucky, growing up and listening to that stuff. Gene (Eugene Drucker, lst violin) and Phil (Philip Setzer, 2nd violin) both studied with Oscar Shumsky, a legend out of the Kreisler tradition, and Gene's father Ernst played second violin in the Kreisler Quartet for two years. Phil's parents are both violinists. His Dad played in a quartet from the Cleveland Orchestra.' Setzer explains: 'It was called the Symphonia Quartet which had connections with Glenn Gould, making the only recording of his String Quartet. I have the score, and we should really do it. It's like early Schoenberg, with a great fugue! We had other performers at our house and I grew up listening to records of Beethoven Quartets and the Schubert String Quintet with the Budapest. Music was always on and both my parents were fans of Kreisler and Heifetz. Zukerman and Perlman today are in that tradition, but many young students really don't know who Kreisler was. He's the guy that wrote Praeludium and Allegro, they say!'

Finckel is emphatic about his early days. 'I was brought up on the Bach Brandenburgs before I got into cello. I always thought I would be a musician, never thinking of anything else. I played cello at 11 and piano before that, so it was kind of natural. The whole family played cello - uncles, cousins, grandfathers, and I won some competitions - it was very simple for me and I still love it.' Finckel's recitals with Wu Han are widely praised, but relaxation is difficult, constantly practising old and new repertoire with so much going on. Setzer: 'David requires to get away from it, and I need to recharge my batteries every so often. For me it's not so much where I go to but where I go from. I just have to stop playing for a couple of weeks - not to be on stage some of the time without giving out so much, but just digging down there! To rest - not physically, but emotionally.' Larry Dutton sees it as 'playing out of the quartet for periods, doing solos and chamber music with others. That's important for all of us. Three of our wives are also musicians, and there are our children, but when the Quartet started out it grew and grew. That was fantastic, but then we had to learn how to control it. We play over 100 concerts a year as it is and need to tell the people running it that we won't give any more in any tour - we do 2 weeks at a time, but at the beginning had 3, 4 and sometimes five-week stints. Almost half our career is spent in Europe, but it is a balance between performing and recording. In New York we have Max Wilcox producing. I like to unwind by back-packing going into the mountains.' Eugene Drucker likes to read in French and has a degree in English literature. 'On a recent tour of Japan and Australia I thought it appropriate to bring along Homer's Odyssey . Sometimes I felt like Odysseus in sight of the goal, and not quite getting there!' He also jogs to stay healthy.

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The Emerson Quartet. Photo: Sheila Rock