Who is popular today?

Hannigan/Chamayou/Emerson String Quartet(Alpha)This wonderful parting gift from the quartet features warm lustrous performances of Schoenberg’s Second Quartet (with soprano Barbara Hannigan) and Berg’s opus 3, plus two beautifully rendered rarities by Hindemith and ChaussonNext month, after more than four decades as one of the world’s leading string quartets, the Emerson Quartet will give their final concerts. Their last disc before they go their separate ways is built around one of the cornerstones of the 20th-century quartet repertoire, a work they had never recorded before. Schoenberg’s Second Quartet is remarkable not only for including settings for soprano of poems by Stefan George in its final two movements, but also as the piece in which he took his first tentative steps into the unknown world of atonality, even though in its closing bars the music returns to the safety of F sharp major.Alban Berg’s Op 3 Quartet, completed in 1910, two years after his teacher Schoenberg’s Second but not published until 10 years later, makes a logical companion piece, and the Emersons give both works warm, lustrous performances, more generous than many of their earlier, more objective recordings. Barbara Hannigan is the soprano in the Schoenberg, her elegance and cool, precise shaping of every phrase perfectly tailored to the keenly expressive vocal lines, though the recording seems to place her voice just a bit too far forward in the audio picture. Continue reading...