As part of its 25th-anniversary celebration, the Emerson Quartet is presenting a series of performances here at Lincoln Center. The first two concerts featured music of Beethoven and Haydn. (For a review of the Emerson's recording of Haydn string quartets, see this month's Discoveries Column.) On March 17, the series culminates in a marathon concert featuring all six Bartk string quartets. Emerson founders Philip Setzer (BM '73, MM '75, violin) and Eugene Drucker (DIP '72, violin) took time to muse over the ensemble's beginnings at Juilliard and a relationship that has weathered more than a quarter century.

The way Philip Setzer tells it, the Emerson Quartet's conception was a rushed conversation in the Juilliard library. Setzer and Eugene Drucker, both students of the late Oscar Shumsky, had become friends. They had been assigned to separate string quartets one year, but neither found his ensemble particularly rewarding. One day, as Setzer was hurriedly returning scores to the library, Drucker suggested that they form their own quartet the following year. "As I was going out the door of the library," Setzer remembered, " I hear Gene, who was right near the door, saying, 'We'll switch. We'll switch on the violins, O.K.?' I said, 'Yeah. Sure. Great. Terrific.' That's sort of how it started."

Both Drucker and Setzer mentioned the importance of the support they received at Juilliard. "Robert Mann, who had been the first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet, was a great mentor of ours," Drucker said. Peter Mennin, then the School's president, gave the fledgling quartet encouragement. After attending one of the group's off-campus concerts Mennin called its members into his office, with a challenge. If they could stay together for five years, he believed they had a shot at making it professionally. Setzer said, "There were times in those first five years when we kept saying, 'Remember what Mennin said. If we can just stay together another couple of years, maybe we'll make it.'"

According to Drucker, the first piece they mastered was Bartk's Second Quartet. He said, "It took us most of that year to learn it, and now every time we play the Bartk Second, no matter how many times we've played it in between, there's something about it, some passage here or there, or some harmony even, that fleetingly reminds me of those early years."

The ensemble has played all of Bartk's quartets in one concert, the so-called marathon, many times, first in 1981 to mark the centenary of the composer's birth. The ensemble decided to perform all six works in chronological order to emphasize Bartk's musical development (and to distinguish itself from the performances other quartets were planning). Setzer believes that this gradual introduction to the composer's language appeals to listeners: "That's a very rewarding thing for the audience because they feel like they really understand what's going on rather than being thrown into it."

How do Emerson's members maintain a good working relationship? Drucker said the keys were a sense of humor and "being able to have a certain distance from each other. We have a fair amount of independence in the way we deal with the practical issues of conducting our career. I think that's important be cause there can be such a thing as too much closeness." Setzer agreed, laughing, "Absolutely. I have no sense of humor, but other than that, absolutely. You can't be together all the time."

-Lisa Yelon