Eleven years ago, the Emerson String Quartet was auditioning younger
ensembles for a training program at the Hartt School of Music, in
Connecticut. Piles of performance tapes came in, and the Emersons
decided to listen to them while driving between destinations on a
European tour.
One tape, from a young Toronto quartet, juxtaposed the
expected Beethoven with a contemporary Canadian work in which the
players were required to yell at the top of their lungs. The screaming
began just as the Emersons were negotiating a difficult stretch of
Alpine road.
"We'd heard this perfectly good Beethoven, and we were
saying, 'Very nice,' when the screaming started, and we almost lost
control of the car," the violinist Philip Setzer recalled. "We could
all have died right then and there. Of course, we had to meet the crazy
kids who sent in the tape."
Read the rest of Alex Ross' 2001 article in The New Yorkerhere.
The "crazy kids" in a YouTube clip that is several years old. (There have been two personnel changes in the SLSQ since this film was made.)
Stay tuned for the St. Lawrence's visit to Providence in mid-March.
