Drucker, Eugene 1952–

PERSONAL:

Born 1952. Education: Juilliard School of Music, artist diploma.

CAREER:

Musician and writer. Emerson Quartet, founding member, 1976—. Has played violin and cello on numerous recordings in Music at Marlboro Radio Broadcasts, 1990-93; Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57; Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67, Philips, 1991; Sonata for Solo Violin (1944); 44 Violin Duos (1931), Biddulph Recordings 1998; and Violin Sonata No. 1 (1921); Violin Sonata No. 2 (1922), Biddulph Recordings, 1998. Performer with Emerson Quartet on albums, including Bartok: The Six String Quartets, Deutsche Grammophon, 1989; Prokofiev: String Quartets 1 and 2, Deutsche Grammophon, 1992; Ives: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2/Barber: String Quartet, Op. 11, Deutsche Grammophon, 1993; Barber: The Songs, Deutsche Grammophon, 1994; (With Menahem Pressler) Dvorak: Piano Quintet and Quartet, Deutsche Grammophon, 1994; String Quartets of Debussy and Ravel, Deutsche Grammophon, 1995; Beethoven: Complete String Quartets, Deutsche Grammophon, 1997; Beethoven: The Key to the Quartets, Deutsche Grammophon, 1997; Meyer: Quintet/Rorem: String Quartet, Deutsche Grammophon, 1998; (with David Shifrin) Mozart/Brahms: Clarinet Quintets, Deutsche Grammophon, 1999; (with Mstislav Rostropovitch) Schubert: The Late Quartets and Quintet, Deutsche Grammophon, 1999; Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8, Deutsche Grammophon, 1999; and Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets, Deutsche Grammophon, 2000.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cowinner of Grammy Awards, Best Classical Album, 1989, 2001, Best Chamber Music Performance, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001; Gramophone Magazine Awards, Record of the Year, 1989; Best Chamber Music Performance, 2000. Also solo awards, including International Violin Competition in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1975, bronze medal, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition, Brussels, 1976; Concert Artist Guild prize, 1976.

WRITINGS:

The Savior (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eugene Drucker is the author of the novel The Savior but is much better known as a violinist in the Emerson String Quartet, along with Lawrence Dutton, David Finckel, and Philip Setzer. Named after poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the quartet has won numerous Grammy Awards. ‘The Emersons, according to critics, came to represent the apex of their art,’ wrote a contributor to Contemporary Musicians. The author plays a prized Antonius Stradivarius violin made in Cremona, Italy, dating back to 1686.

In his first novel, The Savior, Drucker draws on his life in music and the arts to tell the story of Gottfried Keller, a violinist who is forced to play for dying soldiers and concentration camp inmates. ‘It's a story that first came to me when I was preparing for the Queen Elisabeth competition in Belgium about 30 years ago,’ the author told James R. Oestreich in an interview in the New York Times. Drucker went on to explain that he had arranged concerts in private churches and homes and collaborated with an organization called Hospital Audiences, which arranged for musicians to perform at hospitals, alcoholic wards, and drug rehabilitation wards. Noting that he ‘had some distracting experiences while … [he] was doing that,’ Drucker told Oestreich: ‘So I guess all of these observations were in the back of my mind as I went through the competition. I made it to the finals, and I was preparing for my New York debut recital later that year.’ The author went on to note later in the same interview: ‘I thought there was some material here about the relationship between a performer and his audiences. And perhaps it would be interesting to push it to the most extreme possible circumstances to see what effect that would have on the performer, and if music would have a different effect from usual on audiences in extreme situations as well."

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten called The Savior ‘a tightly plotted and deeply affecting story of a particular historical catastrophe and a meditation on the simultaneous indispensability and limitations of art as a transformative human experience.’ In the novel, the violinist Keller is recruited by the SS for a pitiless experiment at a Nazi concentration camp. Forced to live in the camp, Keller plays for various prisoners. The ‘experiment’ is the brainchild of the camp's commandant, who wants to see if he can restore the desire to live in people who have lost their will to live. At first, Keller is suspicious but also partially won over by the commandant's intellect and his bookshelf featuring writings by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller.

"The novel, like life, has irony, not least of which is its title,’ wrote Terez Rose on the Mostly Fiction Web site. ‘Keller plays his music in an attempt to save both himself and his dispirited audience, which include Grete, a woman he briefly befriends. Not all his listeners, however want to be saved. Some deeply resent this attempted return of beauty and culture to their lives; they recognize the trick being played on them.’ In the novel, the author also examines the idea of how a culture that could produce musical giants—such as Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, and Mendelssohn—could also foster the Holocaust. ‘The Savior joins a long list of art works that explore the connection between classical music and the Third Reich,’ noted St. Petersburg Times contributor John Fleming. In the novel, Keller goes from despising his audience, who want to hear show tunes and other popular songs, to disturbed feelings of remorse, anguish, and pity as one dying prisoner asks if Keller has come there to heal them.

Writing on the Forward Web site, Rebecca Milzoff, commented: ‘To write a novel about the Holocaust is to enter, willingly, into precarious territory. What at first seems like a rich mine for inspiration is a subject seemingly ever present in contemporary literature of a certain sort, yet ever impossible to label cliché.’ Nevertheless, The Savior received many favorable reviews. ‘Drucker has not written a sentimental, moralistic tale,’ noted Rose on the Mostly Fiction Web site. ‘Gottfried Keller is neither perpetrator, victim, hero or dissident. He is an average German citizen.’ A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the author's ‘musical insights raise the writing high above what might have been a quotidian tale."

"My father told me a great deal about his experiences as a Jew in Germany,’ Drucker related to Rose. Drucker went on to relate the story of how his father was scheduled to play with his school's orchestra but was taken off the performers' list when a new Nazi director was appointed. One of his father's teachers demanded that Drucker's father be allowed to play. They compromised, and he was allowed to perform for a short time. ‘He came out onstage and saw the first three rows of the audience lined with brown-shirts,’ noted Drucker.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Musicians, Volume 33, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Books, July 28, 2007, ‘Music and Sadism Collide in a Holocaust Tale,’ p. 10.

High Fidelity, July, 1981, ‘The Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 4; March, 1984, ‘The Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 6.

Independent, November 2, 2001, ‘Four's a Company,’ p. 16.

Library Journal, July 1, 2007, Edward Cone, review of The Savior, p. 74.

Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2007, Tim Rutten, review of The Savior.

New York Times, May 9, 1980, ‘Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 24; March 20, 1981, ‘For Bartok Centennial, All 6 Quartets,’ p. 19; December 14, 1983, ‘Emerson Quartet,’ p. 27; July 25, 1985, ‘Emerson Quartet,’ p. 13; January 29, 1987, ‘Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 24; October 17, 1988, ‘Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 19; August 27, 1991, ‘Antigone: Mendelssohn Festival,’ p. 12; January 19, 1993, ‘Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 14; July 20, 1994, ‘Emerson Quartet,’ p. 14; September 9, 2001, ‘The Emersons Recapitulate,’ p. 63; March 20, 2002, ‘Bartok Keeps the Emerson Quartet on Its Toes,’ p. 5; July 29, 2007, James R. Oestreich, ‘When Great Art Meets Great Evil,’ review of The Savior.

New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1993, ‘The Emerson, Con Brio,’ p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2007, review of The Savior, p. 135.

St. Petersburg Times, August 12, 2007, John Fleming, review of The Savior.

Washington Post, December 18, 1982, ‘Emerson String Quartet,’ p. 11.