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In a very small hall, sitting very close: no system comes close. Period.
You can get an impression from recorded music, perhaps, but that's all.
Beethoven. Britten. Shostakovich. Good program, superb playing--- $35 excellent seats, a venue that's a twenty-minute walk from home on a beautiful fall afternoon.
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A treasured memory is of two performances in the 1990s given at Crowder Hall at the University of Arizona. These performances were part of a series spread through the season in which all of Beethoven's quartets would be played, with several quartets sharing the honors.
For the Emerson, we had lucked out and sat in the second row. It was electrifying and unforgettable.
An all Russian program, the 3 women are Russian born and trained. An amazing experience. I don't favor the sound of the venue, so I make sure to get the closest seat I can.
I agree. I hear the Emerson Quartet last summer and it was a transcendent experience unapproachable by a recording, not matter how good the recording is. It is like the being in the same room with a person vs talking on Skype. I have also recently heard quartet performances by the Danish, Keller, Pacifica, and Takacs quartets and they were all amazing performances, with every detail and nuance being manifest. When I listened to the radio broadcast of the Emerson performance a few weeks later it was a pale reflection of the original performance, in spite of being very well recorded.
Edits: 10/13/14
plane because of the seamlessness, the sound, and I favor their interpretations. What remains for me is the warmth and vigor of the playing. MInd you, this was a small venue in a small town on a Sunday afternoon w/the group having a tight schedule that had them racing off to make a flight.
Amazing professionalism, to boot!
it would seem. True that home reproduction can barely approximate
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
Well, now that cellist David Finckel has left, the ORIGINAL Emerson Quartet itself is a "great quartet of the past", isn't it? ;)
so you can safely ignore!
So current artists are legit as long as they are old white dudes, Got it.
I figured as much - see my post later today though! ;-)
I find the Emerson's performances soulless and machinelike (although I haven't heard them since the new cellist came aboard). I'd much rather listen to the Alexander, Belcea, Takacs, among other groups currently active.
Where you going to go these days to hear the Busch, Hungarian, Budapest, Italian, or Vegh quartets perform live in a small acoustically good hall? I heard the Emersons do Beethoven op. 131 and Schubert no. 14 at Ravinia last summer and it was quartet playing as good as I have ever heard. It was all there, not just the 10% you get on a recording. I'll take over an old Busch recording any day.
I heard the Italiano perform the op. 131 live in 1962 (I think). Great stuff!
The woman behind me as we left said that it was the most boring piece of music she'd ever heard.
Jeremy
Sacrebleu! I thought the lo-fi recording was part of their appeal! ;-)
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