The Emerson String Quartet has amassed an impressive list of achievements: a brilliant series of recordings exclusively documented by Deutsche Grammophon since 1987; eight Grammy awards, including two unprecedented honors for Best Classical Album; three Gramophone magazine awards; and performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven, Bartók, and Shostakovich quartets in major concert halls throughout the world. The ensemble is lauded globally as a string quartet that approaches both classical and contemporary repertoire with equal mastery and enthusiasm. For three decades, the group has collaborated with such artists as Emanuel Ax, Leon Fleisher, the Guarneri String Quartet, Thomas Hampson, Lynn Harrell, Barbara Bonney, Barbara Hendricks, The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Paul McCartney, Menahem Pressler, and Richard Stoltzman, as well as the late Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, and Oscar Shumsky.

The quartet celebrates its 30th season with this historic, eight-concert Perspectives as well as a Shostakovich cycle at Washington’s Kennedy Center and an extensive European tour of concerts in London, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Paris and complete Beethoven cycles in Valencia and Badenweiler. The Quartet continues its residency at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, now in its 27th sold-out season. The Emerson celebrates 20 years of exclusivity with Deutsche Grammophon with an all-Brahms disc comprising the Brahms Quartets and Piano Quintet with Leon Fleisher. Deutsche Grammophon and iTunes join forces with an exclusive three-disc retrospective of the Emerson in June 2007 that includes recording triumphs mingled with personal interviews.

In 2002, the Emerson joined Stony Brook University as quartet-in-residence and conducted its first International Chamber Music festivals at Stony Brook in June 2004 and 2006. This season, the Quartet offers its third Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall. In 2000, the Emerson was named Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, and in March 2004 became the 18th recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize—another first for a chamber ensemble.

Throughout its history, the Emerson 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 subsequent release of the cycle received the 1989 Grammy awards for Best Classical Album and Best Chamber Music Performance and was named Gramophone magazine’s Record of the Year—the first time in the history of each award a chamber-music ensemble had received the top prize.

In 1997, the Quartet released a seven-disc set of the complete Beethoven quartets, earning a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Album. Since 2000, the Emerson has performed the complete Shostakovich quartets in Paris, Russia, New York, and London. Each series culminated with The Noise of Time, a theatrical presentation directed by Simon McBurney (Street of Crocodiles, The Chairs) featuring the Quartet and Complicité. The Shostakovich recording won the 2000 Grammys for Best Classical Album and Best Chamber Music Performance and was named Gramophone magazine’s Record of the Year for Best Chamber Music Performance. In 2001, the Quartet toured Wolfgang Rihm’s Dithyrambe for quartet and orchestra with Christoph von Dohnányi and The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. Through these theatrical and orchestral experiences, the Quartet became intrigued with the idea of standing while performing and began to experiment with this style in chamber-music appearances. The two violinists and the violist of the Emerson now stand for all performances; the cellist plays on a small podium.

Additional Deutsche Grammophon releases are Intimate Voices (Grammy), the complete Mendelssohn string quartets and octet (Grammy), Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, Bach’s Art of Fugue, The Haydn Project, and Emerson Encores. These discs were preceded by quartets of Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, 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; the Dvořák Piano Quintet and Quartet with Pressler; the complete string works of Anton Webern; and Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach with baritone Thomas Hampson. The Emerson won its third Grammy with a disc of Ives and Barber quartets.

Commissions and premieres include compositions by Kaija Saariaho, Nicholas Maw, André Previn, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Edgar Meyer, Ned Rorem, Paul Epstein, Wolfgang Rihm, Richard Wernick, Richard Danielpour, John Harbison, Gunther Schuller, George Tsontakis, Maurice Wright, Ronald Caltabiano, and Mario Davidovsky.

Formed in the bicentennial year of the United States, the Emerson String Quartet took its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer alternate in the first chair position and are joined by violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel.

To commemorate its 25th-anniversary season, the Quartet compiled the commemorative book Converging Lines. Written in the members’ own words, the book contains never-before-published text, graphics, and photos from the Emerson’s private archives. The Quartet is based in New York City. For more information, visit emersonstringquartet.com.