The great veterans of the Emerson String Quartet offer here Robert Schumann’s Quatuors, recorded on three dates and in two different locations. These three Quatuors are rather unique in the sense that they were composed in the same year and over an astonishingly short period of time, over June and July 1842.
Perhaps this creative gesture can be seen as Schumann’s response to his admiration for Quatuors Op.44 by his friend Felix Mendelssohn, to whom this entire work was dedicated. According to French quartet specialist, Bernard Fournier, Schumann wanted to impress his soon-to-be wife, a pianist famous throughout Europe, while he was only known locally as a music critic rather than a composer.
These three quartets, conceived as a whole and written in a rather bright style that is quite rare for Schumann, are rigorously interpreted by the Emersons as they make their debut with the label Pentatone. The American quartet musicians who are highly regarded for their precision, opt for an extreme liveliness that highlights the originality in these works, but to the detriment of an expression that lacks a little warmth. © François Hudry/Qobuz