Infinite Voyage

The Emerson Quartet has been active for 47 years, during which it became one of the world’s leading string quartets with a recorded catalogue that covers almost all the standard repertoire in often unbeatable performances. But as the Emersons prepared to retire in the autumn of 2023, this album was set to be their last. Choosing the repertoire to bow out on, however, was not easy, as violinist Philip Setzer tells Apple Music Classical. “We thought about Mozart but couldn’t agree what. So we ended up with something very different.” And indeed it is­—it’s a recording that’s off-piste, exploratory, and involves friends of the Quartet to join in as collaborative artists. At its heart is Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2, which pulls into its textures a soprano (here, the charismatic Barbara Hannigan), alongside other works from roughly the same early-20th century Austro-German culture, including Berg’s String Quartet, Op. 3, and another, almost-unknown piece by Hindemith for quartet and soprano called Melancholie. But then there’s a surprising shift in soundworlds, back to the French fin de siècle with Chausson’s equally unknown Chanson perpétuelle, a keyboard quintet featuring pianist Bertrand Chamayou. Why choose this music to go out on? One answer is that the players are fascinated by it and deliver it with passionate commitment, relishing the way “small gestures are invested with a great deal of expressive meaning”, as violinist Eugene Drucker says of the Schoenberg. But another answer lies in the collective sense of passing and renunciation that holds all these works together. “They come steeped,” says Drucker, “in a sense of transition from one era of aesthetics to another,” surrendering the old language of Romanticism to the new of atonality. Involving loss, regret but also a desire to move on, it reflects what Philip Setzer calls the “bittersweetness of the recent months of farewell concerts”, adding that “although it’s sad, it’s not all loss.” Things end, things start: the cycle of existence.