Emerson String Quartet

The Emerson String Quartet has consolidated its position as one of the leading American chamber groups since being chosen in the early 1980s by Deutsche Grammophon to record the string quartet literature for the new CD medium. The quartet was named after the transcendentalist philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and was among the first whose violinists shared leadership duties. Founder members Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate as first and second violinists; they and long-serving violist Lawrence Dutton were joined in 2013 by Welsh cellist Paul Watkins when his predecessor, David Finckel, left to embark upon a solo career. The Emerson String Quartet has recorded the complete quartets of Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók, Webern, and Shostakovich and the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Dvořák, winning a string of awards. The four players used overdubbing to mimic the eight musicians required for the Octet on the acclaimed 2005 set of the Mendelssohn quartets. In 2018 DG issued a 52-disc collection of the quartet’s complete recordings for the label, and in 2020 the group made its debut on Pentatone with a disc of the three quartets of Schumann. In 2021 the Emerson String Quartet announced that it would give its final concert in October 2023, bringing to a close the 47-year career of a quartet that many consider America’s finest.