New addition to an old quartet

“Absolutely not,’’ replies violist Samuel Rhodes when asked whether the remaining three members of the quartet had considered retiring after Smirnoff’s departure. Instead, they immediately began thinking about his replacement. They wanted “a brilliant young player who would continue this whole saga of what the Juilliard Quartet stands for.’’

And so, this Sunday, the ninth iteration of the Juilliard String Quartet will introduce itself to the area in a concert hosted by the Concord Chamber Series. Sitting in the first chair will be 37-year-old Nick Eanet, until recently one of two concertmasters of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. When he was born, the quartet was already on its fifth lineup.

“Any change in the group means that the survival of the group is threatened,’’ says Rhodes by phone from San Francisco. “And it’s quite frightening.’’ He adds that most of the quartets with track records on a par with the Juilliard’s - including the Guarneri and Alban Berg quartets - have disbanded in recent years. “They reach the age that I am [68] and that [cellist] Joel Krosnick is and people want to retire. And the group just stops.

“However,’’ he continues, “with the Juilliard, in the past when it’s been faced with crises like that, it’s gone on and taken a younger member, [which has] renewed the quartet in another generation. And that’s the tradition we are trying to be a part of and continue.’’

Rhodes, Krosnick, and second violinist Ronald Copes, 59, began auditioning replacements last fall. “One of the people we played with was Nick and we knew right from the first few notes that he would be the one, if he wanted it.’’ They were already aware of his astonishing technical fluency. “But we also saw that he had a love of the medium of the string quartet: It absorbed him in the same way it absorbed us. We saw that he responded in his way to every detail the composer wrote on the page. And also he responded to what he heard from us, and we started to respond to him. It started an unspoken dialogue that’s just at its beginning stages and will continue on into the future.’’

Eanet -- who had been a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet before going to the Met -- was unavailable for an interview this week, but in an e-mail responded to a question about joining the Juilliard String Quartet: “As great as working at the Met is - and I’ve experienced some incredible moments over the last 10 years - the main job of a concertmaster is not about diving into the music.

“You’re there to help the conductor communicate with the orchestra, and to help the orchestra communicate with each other - it’s unique work, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But given the opportunity to sit in the chair of Robert Mann, my mentor and founder of the JSQ, and work on a much more personal and intimate level in a more supportive environment, the decision was easy. . . . To me, the Juilliard is the most important chamber ensemble of the last half of the 20th century, and I can’t wait to be part of the next chapter.’’

Eanet was scheduled to play his first concerts with the group this past summer. But in a case of inauspicious timing, he broke his wrist in an inline skating accident just days after the announcement. Eanet told The New York Times last year that the accident had happened while he was in “a state of euphoria’’ after breaking the news of his appointment to Mann.

Rhodes says that Eanet has recovered completely, though the new lineup had to delay its first concert until the fall. The new foursome finally played together in public in September in Pittsfield. Asked whether it was an important event in the quartet’s long life, Rhodes responds, “It felt like an occasion to us, I can tell you. And it went very well.’’

At the Concord Performing Arts Center; 978-371-9667, concordchambermusic.org

At the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, Route 6 in Wellfleet; 508-945-8060, capecodchambermusic.org