Pianist Evgeny Kissin teams up with the Emerson String Quartet for a live chamber music recording from a sold-out Carnegie Hall, in April 2018.

A superstar fusion of musicians performing mesmerizing repertoire: exquisite Fauré, stormy Mozart and sweepingly sensual Dvořák.

This is a rare moment in which one of the world’s most acclaimed pianists can be witnessed as a chamber musician. Thus, this recording, presenting Kissin and the ESQ performing chamber music repertoire, constitutes a novelty in DG’s catalogue.

With 9 Grammy Awards and 3 Gramophone Awards to date, the Emerson String Quartet bestrides the world of chamber music like a colossus. They are without a question among the world’s most impressive string quartets and, founded in 1976, playing today as passionate and inquisitive as ever.

The idea to play together reaches back a couple of years, and has been immediately embraced enthusiastically by all five musicians. They then went on a tour including concerts in Paris, Munich, Vienna, Boston and New York in 2018.

“Mr. Kissin was a dynamo, spurring the Emerson players to take risks or one-upping the challenges they set. But he was no less impressive in his restraint where called for, spinning out rippling passagework with an unfailingly fine, even touch. The Emersons, too, were as melting individually, singing limpid, sinuous melodies, as they were powerful in their unified outbursts.”
 
“You wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped in a small room with the encore, the Scherzo of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.
With each at his most percussive, the players all but lifted the lid off the hall.” - New York Times
 
“Piano & String. As good as it gets!” - Classical Scene
 
“There was wonderful fire and vivacity in the outer sections yet the Dumka movement was most striking.” - Chicago Classical Review (Dvořák)