Emerson String Quartet: Shostakovich, String Qtet no. 3, III

The Emerson String Quartet performs Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet no. 3, III. allegro non troppo; from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY.

The Emerson String Quartet:
Philip Setzer
Eugene Drucker, violins
Lawrence Dutton, viola
David Finckel, cello
http://www.emersonquartet.com/

Performance courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon, GmbH:
http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/

Video produced by Peachtoad Productions:
www.peachtoad.com

• Category

  Music

[jedenbeen]

If a singer tries to sing as high as the first violin, they'll shred their vocal chords!

[TuneBlender]

The only way to express how awesome this quartet is, is by writing a quartet about it!!

[BrainiacFingers]

I think it's perpetuated by the strange compulsion to use orchestras that many rock artists seem to get when they become too old to jump around like Mick Jagger (Mick Jagger excluded of course. He still jumps around like himself :) Suddenly it's a case of "I've used rock musicians all my life but now here's my music played by an ORCHESTRA". As though that somehow elevates it to godhead. And many fans say "wow, this guy is the new Mozart",without ever having listened to Mozart in their lives.

[Huddiethegreat]

I'm glad you've spent some time discussing this. I cringe whenever I see a someone claim that "classical" (I guess they are referring to all western art music?) is so similar to their favorite genre, as if it somehow validates it. People seem to hold art music on a pedestal, happy to use it for their own validation, they'll listen to a movement of Shostakovitch, express their love for it then forget about forever. It's strange.

[gvn933]

that violists hands are gigantic!

[stealspell]

Hitchcock directed this video as you can see by the suspense with the slowly deteriorating bow.

[Michael Repoulis]

Great Music, Wonderful Performance!!!

[Noah Dresser]

Extremely powerful, have a hard time sitting still in my seat!

[BrainiacFingers]

I didn't say the building blocks of music were superficial.I said the arrangement of them tells us a lot about the craftsmanship and, dare I say, the creative intellect of the arranger. I did say that a Shostakovich quartet could be made to sound like metal by switching the timbre to the accepted timbre of those specific genres.But the similarity would only be timbrel, which alone wouldn't make it metal because it would contain none of the formula, other than timbre, that defines metal music.