The Escher Quartet and Igor Levit Test Musical Limits

No equine units were needed outside Alice Tully Hall the other day when the Escher Quartet—Adam Barnett-Hart, Brendan Speltz, Pierre Lapointe, and Brook Speltz—played the Bartók quartets in a single, three-and-a-half-hour concert, under the aegis of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Still, it felt like a significant occasion. The Eschers, who have been playing together since 2005, when they met at the Manhattan School of Music, were nodding to another august group, the Emerson Quartet, which disbanded last fall after a remarkable forty-seven-year run. No one seems to have attempted a Bartók-quartet marathon until the Emersons undertook one, at Tully, in 1981; they repeated the feat seven times in the course of the following two decades. The Eschers were mentored by the Emersons and often emulate their elders. The emphasis is on technical perfection, formal cogency, and unity of interpretive approach. Underscoring the continuity is the fact that David Finckel, the Emersons’ longtime cellist, is a co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society.