The cellist David Finckel remembers the first time he heard the Escher String Quartet. It was on an audition DVD. Intrigued, he arranged to watch them play. "I thought, 'Wow, they are very young, but they sound good. We can work with them,' " says Finckel, who codirects the summer festival Music@Menlo with his wife, the pianist Wu Han. "So we accepted them for a two-week residency the Emerson Quartet does at Stony Brook University [in New York]."
What struck Finckel was their technical proficiency, both as individuals and as an ensemble. "They chose very difficult pieces — the Bartók String Quartet No. 5 and the Debussy String Quartet — and played them at the very highest level," says Finckel. "That was unusual for a quartet that was playing together for only two years. As much as one could be, they are a string quartet prodigy."
Ranging in age from 23 to 30, the foursome — violinists Adam Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie, violist Pierre Lapointe, and cellist Andrew Janss — met in August 2004 at the Manhattan School of Music and began playing together in January 2005. But it was the challenge they faced the following summer that made them realize they had a future together as a professional string quartet. They had just two weeks to learn the Bartók String Quartet No.5 for a performance in the Young Artists Program at the National Art Centre in Ottawa, Canada, led by violinist Pinchas Zuckerman. "After that performance, I realized that the people I was playing with were really committed and that we could become a professional group," says violist Lapointe.
Lapointe chose to play in a string quartet, rather than as a soloist or in an orchestra, because the quartet literature offers a violist the most challenging and significant repertoire. Cellist Janss agrees: "Although a solo career offers infinitely more artistic freedom, the repertoire is incredibly limited." And although the repertoire of an orchestral musician is amazing in its variety, Janns says he would have limited artistic license to play the way he desired, and "over time, your technique can deteriorate if you're not careful to keep up your training." The string quartet offered him an incredible breadth of repertoire and a high degree of artistic freedom, a perfect balance.
When the four musicians became a quartet, they realized they needed to choose a name.
Call Us Escher
"The Escher Quartet was about the 2,000th name we came up with," jokes Janss, the cellist. M.C. Escher was a 20th-century Dutch graphic artist known for his mathematically inspired lithographs. "There was something about the interplay of his lithographs and how the individual pieces were built together to form a whole that appealed to us," Janss says. "We liked the sound of the name and the relationship between architecture and music." Escher's work also reflects the sound they create. "We like vibrato and a resonant sound that is clear," says Lapointe. "We aren't trying to blend as much as some other quartets."
At the Manhattan School of Music they were coached by David Soyer, cellist of the Guarneri Quartet, and Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson Quartet. "They reminded me of a young Emerson Quartet," says Dutton, "serious, hard working, terrific instrumentalists, and fine musicians. They were matched evenly and seemed to be able to work out their musical differences to present a unified front." Dutton saw them again when they won their Stony Brook University residency. "They understood the connection to the tradition of string playing that we admired: Oistrakh, Primrose, Shumsky, Heifetz. They had a rich, warm, and beautiful vibrato," Dutton remembers.
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The road to quartet stardom began with their distinction as individual musicians. Cellist Andrew Janss received the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music prize six times during his stint as a student at the Manhattan School of Music and was principal cellist of the two student orchestras there. He graduated in May 2006 with the Hugo Kortschak Award for Excellence in Chamber Music. Violist Pierre Lapointe started playing the violin at age 4 and majored in violin studies at Ottawa University. But at the suggestion of one of his teachers, he started playing the viola. He came to San Francisco State University in 2000 and began playing in string quartets under the tutelage of the Alexander String Quartet. "Unfortunately the quartets I played in did not stick together," Lapointe relates. By May 2003 he had graduated from San Francisco State University and had decided that the viola was his instrument. He started the doctorate degree program at the Manhattan School of Music and hooked up with the current three members of the Escher Quartet.
Violinist Wu Jie won the first prize at the Orford Second International Violin Competition in 1999, playing the Barber violin concerto. She has studied with Pinchas Zuckerman at the Manhattan School of Music and will graduate with a master of music degree from the Juilliard School in 2008. Violinist Adam Barnett-Hart won the top prize in the 2001 and 2002 Irving M. Klein Competition in San Francisco and as an undergraduate student played the Brahms violin concerto with the Juilliard Symphony. All have been students with famous and well-connected musicians: Janss with David Geber; Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie with Pinchas Zuckerman; and Lapointe with Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton.
The competition to be a successful string quartet has increased dramatically in the past 30 years. An informal survey done by David Rowe, a chamber ensemble artist manager, identified 29 professional string quartets who were listed in Musical America in 1965. By 1990 there were 110 and the number today is between 120 and 130.
But the Eschers are already beginning to stand out. Finckel praises the homogeneity of the Escher Quartet's sound and the way the players maximize their instruments' potential. "They don't have instrumental shortcomings which they hide in extra musical camouflage," he says. "Their posture, visual expression, and movements don't add or subtract from what you hear. They sound as good when the listener closes or opens their eyes."
Glory Road
The invitations it has received and competitions it has won in its two and a half years of existence attest to the quality of the Escher Quartet's music making. A few months after its formation in January 2005, the ensemble was invited to be the student quartet in residence at Pinchas Zuckerman's and Itzhak Perlman's respective summer festivals. In 2006 the quartet was selected for the CMS Two program, a residency of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, along with the Jupiter Quartet. When Wu Han and David Finckel became the artistic directors of CMS in 2007, they expanded the residency to three years. The Escher Quartet will have many opportunities to perform with senior musicians of the CMS on the Tully Hall stage, as well as at the Rose Studio in Lincoln Center. The selection follows such classical music luminaries as pianists Jonathan Biss and Lang Lang and violinist Hilary Hahn as resident musicians in the Chamber Music Society residency program.
This summer the Escher Quartet is making its debut at La Jolla SummerFest, the Ravinia Festival (where it is playing two Zemlinsky quartets), the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Green Music Festival in Sonoma. It is the quartet in residence for the next year at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts.
When Finckel and Wu Han were looking for a group to play the Mendelssohn Second Quartet for their "Homage" program on July 23-24 during this, the fifth-annual Music@Menlo Festival, the Eschers came to mind. "They played that work last summer at the Aspen Music Festival and I heard them do it at our workshop at Stony Brook," says Finckel. "They play it very well. When I think of where I can find a great performance of that Quartet, I think of the Escher Quartet."
Of course, receiving so much success at such a young age might seem to have its risks — high expectations unmet or burnout. But Lapointe doesn't think so. "The only downside I can see to our recent success is that I probably won't have time to finish my DMA at the Manhattan School of Music," he says. Janss sees success as a way the four can focus on being a quartet, rather than having to spread themselves thin on gigs like orchestras and weddings to earn a living. "The first years are always going to be the most stressful regardless of circumstance," he says. "Our success has alleviated that stress rather than added to it."
The need to rapidly expand their repertoire has probably been the most difficult issue the musicians have faced. "We've spent the first year focusing on a small number of great works and that has left us with a short list of concert programs," says Janss. "We've been pushing ourselves to fill in the gaps without cutting corners, but it means we have to add on a couple of hours at the end of every rehearsal day. On the other hand, spending all day absorbing great art is a wonderful position to be in."
The Eschers continue what has become a Music@Menlo tradition of quartet performances. Previous seasons have featured the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, the Miami String Quartet, the Miró Quartet, and the Orion Quartet. "Part of the joy and philosophy of Music@Menlo is to introduce our audiences to new musicians, as well as seeing people return," Finckel says.
The Escher Quartet will be teaching and coaching musicians as well as participating in Michael Steinberg's "Handshakes Across the Centuries" Encounter program on July 22. It will also play the Boccherini Guitar Quartet with guitarist Jason Vieaux July 28-30.
The quartet is no stranger to performing in alternative venues or with groups that play other kinds of music. It performed Bartók and Zemlinsky at Tonic, a small concert club on New York's Lower East Side, on the first half of a concert with pop-folk singer-songwriter Luke Temple. "We loved it and so did the audience," comments Janss. It also played with jazz musician Kurt Elling in a concert at Carnegie Hall. "We're on his new CD
Night Moves and did a couple of string quartet introductions to his songs."
The Escher Quartet sees its early success as a launching pad for the future. "We have gained the respect of our peers and now we have to convert that into an audience following," Janss says. "We have to communicate that we're worth hearing again and again." Performing at a high level is critical, but other ways of communicating are also important. "You need to go to receptions and be able to talk to people who don't know anything about string quartets," says Lawrence Dutton of the Emersons. Interacting with audiences before and after performances has become a regular part of the chamber music experience. "That's something we have to learn, and we're beginning to do that," Lapointe says.
Perhaps the most critical element to sustaining a career is "being on a quest, a mission," says Finckel. "I believe that successful groups are in a constant stage of musical growth, always trying something new." The Escher Quartet's decison to learn and perform the difficult Zemlinsky quartets is the kind of commitment to musical growth that can help it become a group well worth listening to, now and for years to come.