Itโs been seven years since the Emerson String Quartet performed with the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music.
That drought ends Wednesday, Oct. 21, when the group opens the Friends 2015-16 season.
It will be our first time seeing the quartetโs new guy, cellist Paul Watkins, who replaced founding cellist David Finckel. He left the group in 2013, months after it played its last Tucson concert with UA Presents in 2012.
Founding violinist Eugene Drucker said we might notice a few little things with Watkins in the group.
โI think the difference in the sound might be that Paulโs sound is a little darker and closer to the bass spectrum rather than to the baritone tenor area,โ Drucker explained in a phone interview in early October. โObviously David in his low register has a very solid, supportive sound, and Paul can sound like a tenor in his high register, too. So I hesitate to over-generalize. But I think that the sound foundation for the entire quartet is a little bit deeper and perhaps a little bit richer than it was before.โ
And the quartetโs tempo and sense of pacing might be a little less streamlined than in years past.
โPerhaps we take a little bit more time,โ Drucker said, cautious not to give the impression that the quartetโs tempos are any less intense than before. โBecause we do play with a lot of intensity. But the dynamic within the group is somewhat different and I think thatโs perceptible to most audiences especially those who were familiar with our playing over many years before.โ
The Emerson Quartet had been a regular on the Arizona Friends series since the early 1990s and Drucker is at a loss to explain the recent absence. But he said he and his fellow founding members โ violinist Philip Setzer and violist Lawrence Duttonโ are excited to introduce Watkins to their Tucson fans.
โWeโve had a good feeling from the audience when weโve played there just in terms of their responsiveness. Itโs a lovely place to return to,โ Drucker said.
The Emerson was in its 36th season when Finckel departed. But Watkinsโ arrival was fairly seamless, Drucker said. Two of his colleagues โ Setzer and Dutton โ had worked with Watkins in the past and Drucker was familiar with his reputation in the music community.
โThe chemistry didnโt take any time at all to build up, or very, very little time,โ he said, noting that the four clicked personally and musically fairly quickly. โThe first few concerts it may have seemed we were getting acquainted musically. But very quickly within a few months it seemed like we had been playing together for a long time.โ
There was one hitch: Watkins had little experience with string quartet repertoire. His learning curve was huge.
โEven now, the beginning of our third season together, we have eight pieces to play together with Paul for the first time. So itโs a very busy time right now. Of those pieces, five or six of the eight he had never played before,โ Drucker said, including all three pieces they will play here.
Drucker said by the time they get to Tucson, they will have played the works three or four times.
