Emerson Quartet to Conclude SFP Chamber Series

Emerson String Quartet players Paul Watkins, Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, and Lawrence Dutton (photograph by Jürgen Frank, courtesy of SFP)

Next month San Francisco Performances (SFP) will conclude its 2022–2023 Chamber Series with a momentous occasion. The final program presented at the end of last season’s Chamber Series was a recital by the Emerson String Quartet, whose members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins. This season Emerson will return to the Chamber Series, but this will be one of the stages on its final tour. For almost half a century the ensemble provided attentive listeners with an impressive breadth of repertoire, setting a bar level that now motivates a new generation of string quartet players.

While that breadth became a “calling card” for the ensemble, their farewell program for SFP will go “back to the basics” of the First Viennese School. In roughly chronological order, they will play Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/41 in G major (the fifth of the quartets published as Opus 33). This will be followed by Mozart’s K. 421 quartet in D minor. Finally, they will conclude with the second (in the key of E minor) of the three Opus 59 “Razumovsky” quartets from the middle period. That chronology will be framed by the opening selection on the program. This will be Henry Purcell’s Z. 730, the G minor “Chacony” that began his 1680 Fantasies and in nomines publication. Emerson will play an arrangement of Purcell’s score for string quartet, which was prepared by Benjamin Britten.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 14. Like all the other Chamber Series concerts, it will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. Ticket prices are $75 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $60 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $50 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.