Emerson String Quartet opens Music@Menlo’s 2013/14 winter season on October 13

Dubbed “America’s greatest quartet” by Time magazine, the renowned Emerson String Quartet, featuring its newest member, cellist Paul Watkins, returns to Music@Menlo’s Winter Series on Sunday, October 13 at 4:00 pm.

In its first Bay Area concert since Watkins joined the group, the foursome presents an afternoon of music by three of the quartet literature’s most seminal composers. Haydn’s Opus 20 quartets represented a breakthrough in the composer’s quartet writing; the set’s g minor Quartet demonstrates the innovative spirit that would establish Haydn as the father of the string quartet. Shostakovich’s penultimate quartet, penned near the end of the composer’s life, complements Haydn’s Classical idiom with a distinctly modern tongue. The program concludes with Mendelssohn’s deeply expressive Opus 80 Quartet, likewise composed during the composer’s final months.

The concert takes place at the Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton High School. Tickets – $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 under age 30 – are available online.