ওয়াশিংটন বাংলা রেডিও Washington Bangla Radio USA

Washington, D.C., Jan 3, 2012 (Washington Bangla Radio) After 35 years of extensive touring, the Emerson String Quartet boasts an incomparable list of achievements: nine Grammy® Awards (including two for Best Classical Album, an unprecedented honor for a chamber music group), three Gramophone Awards, the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and an international reputation for groundbreaking chamber music projects including cycles of the complete Beethoven, Bartók, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich string quartets in the world’s musical capitals. In addition, the Quartet’s cellist David Finckel and his wife, pianist Wu Han, were named 2012 Musicians of the Year by Musical America.  The couple work together as Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Based in New York City, the Quartet performs at the Music Center at Strathmore on Wednesday, February 15 at 8 p.m. and is joined by Wu Han for two of the works.

“Concertgoers have come to count on these superb musicians,” said the New York Times. Said Greg Sandow in the Wall Street Journal, “Amazingly, these 40-ish Americans play better than most of the revered quartets of history.”

Previously recording for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical announced an exclusive agreement with the Quartet in March 2011. Their debut album for the label, Mozart's Prussian Quartets K. 575, K. 589 and K. 590, was released in October 2011 to coincide with a series of concerts at Wigmore Hall in London and Alice Tully Hall in New York City.

In the 2011-2012 season, the Quartet performs extensively throughout North America and Europe, with concerts in Boston, Vancouver, Denver, Philadelphia, , San Diego, Houston and Ann Arbor and on tours taking them to Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Austria, England, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and South Korea while also continuing its residency at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., now in its 32nd season.

Their 2010-2011 season included a three-concert series at London’s Wigmore Hall and the world premiere of Thomas Adès' The Four Quarters in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, a work the quartet later performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and at South Bank Centre in London.

The Quartet has a long-term residency at Stony Brook University where they have given master instrumental instruction and perform several concerts each year. They also have a continuing educational affiliation with Carnegie Hall. The Quartet has conducted three Professional Training Workshops at Carnegie's Weill Music Institute, focusing on the Bartók quartets, the quintets of Brahms and Dvorák and, most recently the Beethoven quartets, in conjunction with the Perspectives Series.

While dedicated to the performance of classical repertoire, the Quartet has also has demonstrated a strong commitment to the commissioning and performance of 20th- and 21st-century music. Important commissions and premieres include compositions by Pierre Jalbert (2011), Lawrence Dillon (2010), Bright Sheng (2007), Nicholas Maw (2006), Andre Prévin (2003), Joan Tower (2003), Ellen Taaffe Zwillich (1998), Edgar Meyer (1995), Ned Rorem (1995), Paul Epstein (1994), Wolfgang Rihm (1993), Richard Danielpour (1988), John Harbison (1987), and Gunther Schuller (1986), among others.

The Quartet’s violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate in the first chair position and are joined by violist Lawrence Dutton as well as Finckel. The Quartet has performed numerous benefit concerts for causes ranging from nuclear disarmament to campaigns against AIDS, world hunger and children's diseases.

Pianist Wu Han, joining the Quartet to play the Brahms Piano Quartet and Schumann Piano Quintet, is a frequent Emerson collaborator and also tours with Finckel. Their wide-ranging musical activities include the founding of Artist-Led, a musician-directed, internet-based recording company for which the couple has made a critically-acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano. Finckel and Han are also active in music administration and in 2003 founded the Silicon Valley concert series, Music@Menlo. They appear frequently together at the United States’ leading music festivals and in 2004 were named Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Who: Emerson String Quartet Wu Han, piano
Where: The Music Center at Strathmore
When: Wednesday, February 15 at 8 p.m.
Program: Haydn Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2 Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25 Schumann Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44
Tickets priced $35-$85, available at www.wpas.org or by calling (202) 785-9297 (WPAS).