Ésme Quartet with Pianist Yekwon Sunwoo | February 20, 2024 | House Program

PROGRAM NOTES
The string quartet that opens tonight’s concert is
remarkable for the joyously light character that
pervades much of the music. Its nickname, “The
Joke,” is certainly well deserved for two reasons:
first, instead of a Minuet, Haydn writes a faster
Scherzo which includes a Trio that makes great
use of surprising glissandos (or slides) into
pitches; and second, for the way in which the
last movement ends with a coda that keeps
interjecting silences that generate a series of false
endings before the final cadence whispers away.
For the vast majority of women musicians and
composers, life and posterity have not been kind,
with a clear case of such gender injustice found
in the career and music of Fanny Mendelssohn
(1805-1847). Felix’s older sister by three years,
Fanny was by all accounts just as precocious as
her younger brother, and despite being provided
with the same musical tutors as Felix, was
expected to marry and run a family household.
She followed this domestic path, marrying the
Berlin court painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829, which
coincidentally, was the same year that she began
sketches for a piano sonata that in 1834 she
adapted into her only string quartet. Beyond this
scant information, little more is known of this work
until the music was published in 1988 by Breitkipf
& Härtel, a long-standing publisher of Felix’s
music. The work has since gained considerable
popularity with modern audiences for the way it
demonstrates its own unique originality. This can
be immediately heard in the fantasy-like opening
movement that starts expressively in C minor, and
only towards the end settles into the work’s home
key of E flat major. The second movement returns
to C minor in the fast, filigree-like outer sections
that are offset with the vibrant fugal writing of
the C major Trio. The Romanze in G minor, displays
subtle fluidity in the melodic writing such that the
music never seems to cadence but is continually
spun into new sections. The final movement, with
its clear Rondo design and emphasis on exciting
two-part counterpoint doubled at the unison or
in octaves, rounds off the work quite triumphantly
in E flat major.
Many composers seem to have followed Robert
Schumann’s model of writing only one piano
quintet during their careers and making this work
almost symphonic in design and length. Brahms
(1833-1897), whose early career received much
encouragement from Robert Schumann, likewise
composed only one piano quintet. Curiously,
the Brahms piano quintet started out as a string
quintet but was completed as a sonata for two
pianos (a version that is performed today as Opus
34B). At Clara Schumann’s urging, this two-piano
work was adapted for piano and string quartet,
and it is this arrangement that has become a
favourite of chamber music performers and
audiences. All four movements display melodies
and musical textures that are immediately
captivating while at the same time are organized
to support the music’s larger structural form with
a high degree of controlled expansiveness.
©2024 by John Burge for the Isabel
ABOUT ESMÉ QUARTET
At home in Germany, the Esmé Quartet is one of
the most dynamic and multi-faceted string quartets
of its generation, winning audiences and reviewers
over with its infectious energy and immaculate
ensemble playing. The four South Korean
musicians’ ensemble was the first all-female string
quartet to win the first prize and four special prizes,
including the Mozart and the Beethoven Prize, at
the 2018 International String Quartet Competition
at London’s Wigmore Hall: a sensational launch of
an international string quartet career.
This success in competition also proved the
springboard for worldwide concert activities,
ranging from the USA to Europe’s great musical
centres and all the way to Asia, where they were
celebrated during a prestigious residency at
Seoul’s Lotte Concert Hall during the past season.
Furthermore, innumerable concert tours and
guest appearances have taken the Esmé Quartet
to festivals and concert halls such as the Lucerne
Festival, the Verbier Festival, the Schleswig-
Holstein Music Festival, London’s Wigmore Hall,
the Flagey Musiq3 Festival in Brussels, L’Auditori
in Barcelona, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the
Heidelberg String Quartet Fest and Hamburg’s
Elbphilharmonie. In the summer of 2018, they
were also the Quartet in Residence at the
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.