Touring Australia for the first time, Berlin-based string ensemble Esmé Quartet made their Brisbane debut with a concert that revolved thematically around youth and passion, performed for one night only at the Conservatorium Theatre in South Bank.
This is the ninth year of the Esmé Quartet, which is comprised of founding members Wonhee Bae (first violin), Yuna Ha (second violin), and Yeeun Heo (cello) with Dimitri Murrath (viola), who joined the quartet in April 2023. During the quartet’s time in Brisbane, Yeeun Heo also hosted a cello masterclass with the UQ School of Music, providing an opportunity for Brisbane-based early career artists and young music students to work with the ensemble.
The concert was preceded be a pre-concert talk that provided additional context and detail around the music we would hear, and was followed by a brief in-conversation with the Esmé Quartet artists, providing an opportunity for the audience to ask questions about their training, instruments, and creative process. Speaking to the audience before the music began, violinist Wonhee Bae commented that the pieces veered from “very quiet to very wild”.
The concert opened with Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz (‘Slow Movement’), written when he was a student of Schoenberg and inspired by a walking holiday in the Austrian countryside with his younger cousin (who would later become his wife). Through Webern’s sweet, lyrical composition and the excellent work of the musicians, I felt as if I could hear the vistas of the alps unfolding and the stars coming out.
Webern’s short piece was followed by Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A minor. Composed when Mendelssohn was only eighteen years old, it was his first work for string quartet despite its number and was influenced heavily by the later works of Beethoven. Beginning softly and sweetly, the first movement Adagio built and built, racing along as the musicians almost rose from their chairs in their passionate performance. The second movement, Adagio non lento, was a bright tangle of yearning, followed by the light and celebratory third movement, Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto, and concluding with a stormy and thrilling fourth movement, Presto – Adagio non lento.
Following an interval, the concert continued with a short piece by young Australian composer Jack Frerer. Performed in two movements, Spiral Sequences premiered in 2018 and Frerer explained in a programme note that the “first movement presents an inward spiral, constantly tightening…the second works to unravel it.” Indeed, the first movement was pulsing, climbing, with the instruments in conversation and, eventually, harmony. The second movement, by contrast, was soothing and shimmering, unfurling and unwinding and reminding me of the peaceful clear-headedness of watching clouds pass overhead.
The concert concluded with Claude Debussy’s only string quartet. The overlapping bowing and plucking of the strings in the second movement was fascinating, followed by the slower, meandering calm of the third movement before the vigorous fourth movement reenergised the piece and finished the evening on a flourish.
Throughout the concert, the Esmé Quartet musicians were individually expressive and animated even as they moved in perfect unison, playing with flair and obvious enjoyment. Following applause, the quartet returned to the stage and performed an encore of music by Soo Yeon Lyuh, a contemporary Korean composer. Yessori translates to “sound of the past” and the musicians used special techniques to imitate the sounds of traditional Korean instruments, especially the two-stringed bowed haegeum, which was played vertically. Cellist Yeeun Heo also used her instrument in an unusual way, slapping the side of the cello body to create percussion and different sounds and reverberations. This encore was a memorable conclusion to Esmé Quartet’s first Brisbane concert, with the quartet making a distinctive impression in both their choice of programming and their wholehearted, engaging, and expressive performance style.
Esmé Quartet performed at the Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank, on 13 May 2024
Backstreet Brisbane 
Leave a comment