Consoling ‘Words’ from Emerson Quartet

Haydn never wrote a requiem. The closest he got may have been “The Seven Last Words,” a series of meditations on Christ’s statements from the cross. So certain was he in his faith that the work -- seven slow movements, framed by an introduction and a coda -- is surprisingly lyric, sweet, even consoling.

At least it was in the hands of the Emerson String Quartet, which closed a contrasting three-part program with the piece Sunday afternoon as part of the Coleman Chamber Concerts series presented in Beckman Auditorium at Caltech.

Haydn wrote the work for Good Friday services at the Cathedral in Cadiz, Spain, in 1786, originally for chamber orchestra. He arranged it for string quartet a year later and for chorus and orchestra in 1795.

Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, taking turns as first violinist, as is the Emerson’s tradition, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel sensitively probed Haydn’s remarkable variety in classical form while restricted to slow tempos.

Over his colleagues’ arching pizzicato accompaniment, for instance, Setzer spun out the poignant melody that evoked the visionary landscape of the Second Word, “I say unto you truly, today you will be with me in paradise.”

In the Seventh Word, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” the use of mutes allowed full intensity of grief but at low dynamic.

Light years from Haydn’s spiritual certainty is Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 13 in B flat minor, yet another of the composer’s staggering portrayals of human desolation in the 20th century. If there is another dimension here, it is ghosts or memory, heard as nagging, impish rhythmic figures that annoy, interrupt and finally take over the bleak winter landscape portrayed in the opening. With their passionate commitment, the Emersons showed why Shostakovich is the conscience of us all.

They opened the program with Beethoven’s very first quartet, Opus 18, No. 1, a work in which the composer explores all kinds of directions he might go in. The romanticism of the slow movement even sets the stage for Berlioz, who would be born in 1803, three years after this work was written.