MUSIC REVIEW : Emerson Opens Chamber Series

The Emerson String Quartet--violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, who alternate at the first desk; violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist David Finckel--warmed up their Monday evening inaugural program for the Los Angeles Philharmonic-sponsored Chamber Music Under the Stars series by incinerating the First Quartet of Prokofiev. They played it lean, tough, fast-to-frenetic and very scrappily.

Something clearly had to be gotten out of the ensemble system, including acclimatization to the John Ford Amphitheatre acoustic and the night air.

Their problems behind them, the four Americans, all in their mid- to late 30s, returned for a precise, buoyant reading of the Haydn Quartet in E-flat, Opus 33, No. 2--the so-called “Joke” Quartet. To the composer’s explicit witticism in the finale (the rests between the phrases leading to some excruciatingly protracted false endings) was added the extravagant portamento of the Landler trio of the scherzo, deadpanned so convincingly by first violinist Drucker that a novice listener might question whether this was an example of Haydn’s inventiveness (it is) or a performer’s breach of stylistic etiquette.

In the Beethoven Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Opus 131, one could most readily perceive the Emerson’s contemporary orientation. This was late Beethoven played with only a rare nod to the past, reflected mainly in both violinists’ employment of somewhat more portamento than one recalls from earlier encounters.

The vast structure progressed tautly and fleetly, even in the fourth movement, where some executants may opt for a more soulful, cantabile approach. But this listener would not have exchanged Emersonian accuracy and urgency for a bit of questionably apt schmaltz.

The single encore: the slow movement from Beethoven’s Opus 135 Quartet, raptly projected.