The Emerson String Quartet lists achievements including recordings as exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artists (since 1987), eight Grammy Awards (two for Best Classical Album), and three Gramophone awards. They recently celebrated their thirtieth anniversary season with an eight-concert Perspectives Series, titled Beethoven In Context, in Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium, a series juxtaposing Beethoven’s quartet repertoire with compositions spanning three centuries. For this series Carnegie Hall commissioned a quartet from Kaija Saariaho to honor both the project and the anniversary. Other anniversary season performances were a Shostakovich cycle at Washington’s Kennedy Center and an extensive tour of major European cities, with complete Beethoven cycles in Valencia and Badenweiler. The Emerson serves as quartet-in-residence at Stony Brook University and has just concluded its twenty-seventh season of residency at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution. The past season marked their third educational collaboration with Carnegie Hall. In 2004 the Quartet became the first chamber music ensemble to receive the Avery Fisher Prize. Deutsche Grammophon has recently released their CD of the three Brahms Quartets and the Piano Quintet with Leon Fleisher. Formed in 1976, the Quartet took its name from American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
