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Emerson String Quartet (© Emerson String Quartet)
According to last year’s London Times, "... with musicians like [the Emerson Quartet members] there must be some hope for humanity." Judge for yourself this evening. (You’ll no doubt agree!)
The Emersons bring us the Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet, the F-Major, delighting in its luxurious scoring and negotiating its contrasting meters, and pyrotechnical use of a grand arsenal of multiple stops, harmonics, pizzicatos, harmonics with precision and ease. They return later in the evening to give us a luminous reading of Puccini’s string quartet, “Crisantemi.”
Pianist Maria João Pires, justifiably acclaimed for her Mozart interpretations, joins the Vienna Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado for his Piano Concerto No. 14.
Francis Poulenc’s most substantial piano work, “Les soirées de Nazelles,” is actually a set of eight variations with a Preamble and a Cadence and Finale. The eight variations are based on improvised pianistic portraits of friends who joined him in “Portrait” games during long country gatherings. They have retained such titles as ‘Single-mindedness’ and ‘Offhanded and Discreet,’ but actual identities are now unknown. The pianist’s identity is not a secret, howeverhe is Lambis Vassilladis.
The Emersons bring us the Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet, the F-Major, delighting in its luxurious scoring and negotiating its contrasting meters, and pyrotechnical use of a grand arsenal of multiple stops, harmonics, pizzicatos, harmonics with precision and ease. They return later in the evening to give us a luminous reading of Puccini’s string quartet, “Crisantemi.”
Pianist Maria João Pires, justifiably acclaimed for her Mozart interpretations, joins the Vienna Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado for his Piano Concerto No. 14.
Francis Poulenc’s most substantial piano work, “Les soirées de Nazelles,” is actually a set of eight variations with a Preamble and a Cadence and Finale. The eight variations are based on improvised pianistic portraits of friends who joined him in “Portrait” games during long country gatherings. They have retained such titles as ‘Single-mindedness’ and ‘Offhanded and Discreet,’ but actual identities are now unknown. The pianist’s identity is not a secret, howeverhe is Lambis Vassilladis.
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