The Emerson String Quartet returns for a record 24th Concert Series performance Sunday, Jan. 27 at 3 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
The quartet – Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violins, Lawrence Dutton, viola, and David Finckel, cello – will be joined by special guests Paul Neubauer, viola, and Colin Carr, cello, for an evening of music from Johannes Brahms.
The program features Brahms’ Sextet for Strings No. 1 in B-flat Major, op. 18 and Sextet for Strings No. 2 in G Major, op. 36, “Agathe.”
In 2006-07, the Emerson String Quartet released an all-Brahms disc comprising the three Brahms Quartets, and the Piano Quintet with Leon Fleischer. In addition, an eight-concert anniversary “Perspectives Series” at Carnegie Hall featured Beethoven’s quartet repertoire spanning three centuries.
The ensemble has won seven Grammy Awards, including two for Best Classical Album and three Gramophone Awards. In 2004, the Quartet was named the 18th recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize—a first for a chamber ensemble. This season marks the Quartet’s third educational collaboration with Carnegie Hall and its 27th sold-out season in residency at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Formed in 1976, the Emerson String Quartet took its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
When he was 21, violist Paul Neubauer became the youngest principal string player in the history of the New York Philharmonic. He has appeared with more than 100 orchestras throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, including the New York, Los Angeles, Helsinki and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics as well as the St. Louis, Detroit and San Francisco Symphonies.
Neubauer collaborates with the Emerson Quartet in the United States and Europe and performs in recital with pianist Vladimir Feltsman. He is the orchestra and chamber music director of the OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, Okla., and is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Mannes College.
Colin Carr first played the cello at the age of five; three years later he went to the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he studied with Maurice Gendron and later William Pleeth. Carr appears throughout the world as soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and teacher where he regularly performs in London, New York and Boston. He recorded and toured extensively for 20 years with the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio, and is a frequent visitor to international chamber music festivals worldwide.
Carr has won many prestigious international awards including Young Concert Artists, First Prize in the Naumburg Competition, the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Award and Second Prize in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition. His cello was made by Matteo Gofriller in Venice in 1730.
The concert is free for the Union College community, $25 for general admission and $10 for area students. For tickets, call (518) 388-6080; for more information on the Series, call (518) 372-3651 or visit http://www.union.edu/ConcertSeries.