The Haydn Project: Includes The Joke, The Lark, The Rider, Fifths, etc (Includes bonus CD)

"A selection of some of Haydn's string quartets played with style and imagination by the multi-Gramophone Award-winning Ermerson Quartet."

The Emerson String Quartet have been entertaining audiences now for 25 years. To celebrate this fine anniversary comes this album of Haydn quartets, including The Lark, The Rider and Fifths. What makes this album just that little bit special, though, is the inclusion of a bonus third disc with further pieces, by various composers, from the Emerson's extensive back catalogue.


Formed in 1976, the Emerson String Quartet consists of two of the founding members, violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton (since 1977) and cellist David Finckel (since 1979). The quartet - named after the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson - won the NAUMBURG AWARD for Chamber Music in 1978. It is currently resident quartet at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington and at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford.

The Emerson String Quartet has appeared at leading music festivals, including the Feldkirch Schubertiade, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Berlin Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Lucerne International Music Festival and the Ravinia, Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals. In 1987 they made their debut appearance at the Salzburg Festival. They give frequent concerts throughout Europe and the Far East.

The ensemble has performed chamber works with instrumentalists including Yefim Bronfman, Maria João Pires, Menahem Pressler, Mstislav Rostropovich and Carol Wincenc. Their ambitious programs have included cycles of the complete quartets of both Beethoven and Bartók, which they have also recorded for DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON. Their interest in contemporary music is documented by recordings of the American composers John Harbison, Richard Werneck and Gunther Schuller, Charles Ives, Samuel Barber and Edgar Meyer.

The Emerson String Quartet gives numerous benefit concerts for causes ranging from universal peace to the fight against AIDS, world hunger and disabled children.