The Emerson String Quartet has received a Grammy® Award in the category "Best Chamber Music Performance" for its May 2009 recording Intimate Letters, an exploration of the personally expressive works of two great Czech composers: Leos Janácek's String Quartet No. 1 "after Leo Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata"; String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters"; and Bohuslav Martinu's Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola. This is the ninth Grammy® Award for the Emerson Quartet, named "America's greatest quartet" by Time Magazine.

The Emerson String Quartet has recorded over thirty acclaimed recordings with Deutsche Grammophon since 1987, eight of which have won Grammy® Awards-including two for Best Classical Album, an unprecedented honor for a chamber music group. After more than 32 years of extensive touring and recording, the Emerson Quartet continues to perform with the same benchmark integrity, energy and commitment that it has demonstrated since it was formed in 1976.

The quartet's next recording is released in conjunction with a May 2010 three-concert series entitled "Adventures in Bohemia" in the recently-renovated Alice Tully Hall at New York's Lincoln Center. The correlated 3-CD set for Deutsche Grammophon of Dvorák's late quartets, Cypresses and the viola quintet will be released in 2010.

Emerson String Quartet Recording History
Throughout its history, the Emerson String Quartet has garnered an international reputation for groundbreaking chamber music projects and correlated recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. In 1988, the Quartet attracted national attention with the presentation of the six Bartók quartets in a single evening for its Carnegie Hall debut. The Emerson's subsequent release of the cycle received the 1989 Grammy® Awards for "Best Classical Album" and "Best Chamber Music Performance" and Gramophone Magazine's 1989 "Record of the Year Award" - the first time in the history of each award that a chamber music ensemble had ever received the top prize.

In March 1997, the Quartet released a seven-disc set of the complete Beethoven quartets and organized a series of performances over two seasons at New York's Lincoln Center entitled "Beethoven and the Twentieth Century," a total of eight concerts that each paired two Beethoven quartets with a twentieth-century composition. Initial reviews of this series were so strong that the remaining performances were completely sold out; the Beethoven recording earned a Grammy® Award for "Best Chamber Music Album."

Other recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label include the most recent release, May 2009's Intimate Letters, featuring chamber works by Janá?ek and Martin?, J.S. Bach Fugues from "The Well Tempered Clavier," the Grammy® Award- winning Intimate Voices, a recording of Grieg, Nielsen and Sibelius string quartets, and the complete Mendelssohn string quartets and octet, which received 2005 Grammy® Awards for "Best Chamber Music Performance" and "Best Engineered Album, Classical." The Emerson Quartet has also recorded Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, Bach's Art of Fugue, The Haydn Project (a selection of seven quartets from various periods of Haydn's career) and The Emerson Encores, preceded by interpretations of quartets by Schumann, Brahms, Dvo?ák, Smetana, Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Prokofiev, the set of six quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn, the Schubert Cello Quintet with Mstislav Rostropovich, the Schumann Piano Quintet and Quartet with Menahem Pressler, Dvo?ák Piano Quintet and Quartet with Pressler, and the complete string works of Anton Webern and Samuel Barber's Dover Beach with baritone Thomas Hampson. Several of these recordings were nominated for Grammy® Awards. In 1994, the Emerson won its third Grammy®, for "Best Chamber Music Recording" with a disc of "American Originals" - the quartets of Ives and Barber.

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Purchase "Intimate Letters" on iTunes.

EMERSON STRING QUARTET
Eugene Drucker, 1st violin (no. 1), 2nd violin
Philip Setzer, 1st violin, 2nd violin (no. 1)
Lawrence Dutton, viola/alto
David Finckel, cello

INTIMATE LETTERS
Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
CD 0-00289-4778093-9
Available as iTunes download (+ bonus track)

LEOŠ JANÁCEK (1854-1928): String Quartet No. 1 "after Leo Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata"
I. Adagio - Con moto
II. Con moto
III. Con moto - Vivace - Andante - Tempo I
IV. Con moto

BOHUSLAV MARTINU (1890-1959): Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola H. 313
I. Poco allegro
II. Poco andante
III. Allegro
Philip Setzer, violin | Lawrence Dutton, viola

JANÁCEK: String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters"
I. Andante - Con moto - Allegro
II. Adagio - Vivace - Andante - Presto - Allegro - Vivo - Adagio
III. Moderato - Adagio - Allegro
IV. Allegro - Andante - Con moto - Adagio - Tempo I

Recording: New York, Queens College, LeFrak Concert Hall, 5 & 6/2008
Executive Producer: Matthias Spindler
Producer, Engineer and Editing: Da-Hong Seetoo

MEDIA LINKS:

Emerson String Quartet digital press kit

Intimate Letters digital press kit