Wednesday, June 27, 2007  Standing String Quartet?  Charles
Noble wrote a response to a concert that the Emerson Quartet
played last week in Carnegie hall with three quarters of their
ensemble standing up. It seems that the Emerson Quartet's
influence has rubbed off on some of the younger just-out-of-
music-school quartets that are cropping up like violets just
about everywhere.  To me chamber music, particularly playing
string quartets, is a musical experience among equals, and four
people sitting together, moving only when necessary, and
watching one another's bows and faces, are playing together on a
kind of equal turf. The musical product of the group of four has
every chance of sounding like a unified sum that is greater than
all its parts.  When the group of four stands up they become
four standing individuals who each claim their own place on the
stage, very much like the way a standing soloist takes a
commanding place on the stage. The audience, which reacts
physically (we all do) to what it sees as we