The Esmé Quartet played a brightly shining concert for the San Jose Chamber Music Society on Sunday, March 16. Three of the group’s members teach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a fair number of their pupils ventured down to St. Francis Episcopal Church for the event.
Appropriately for a quartet that is three-quarters women of South Korean descent, the concert kicked off with music by two East Asian women composers who now live in the U.S. The ensemble excerpted one movement each from two works that depict the seasons and combine contemporary Western influences with a subtle Eastern feel to the harmonies and phrasing.
“Spring” by Kui Dong begins like a phase-shifting minimalist work in the style of Steve Reich. The chugging gradually runs out of steam and fades away, then little figurations and warbles build up. Harmonies begin with simple triads and then broaden a bit. The piece ends abruptly, another minimalist trait. This performance burned with a shiny tone that felt electronic, a tone characteristic of the entire concert but especially evident here.
“Fall-Winter” by Juri Seo is intended to depict the transition between the title seasons but seems instead to evoke another time of year. It begins slowly with lively but lonely figures, sometimes in just one instrument at a time, then gradually becomes faster, brighter, and more energetic, ending with a feeling of triumph. Birdcall figures in the violins transform almost imperceptibly into a recording of actual birdsong — perhaps an early sign of spring.
After this welcome and fresh introduction, the concert continued with sterling performances of two quartets from the standard repertoire.
Here, Maurice Ravel’s compact String Quartet in F Major sounded surprisingly like the Asian-inspired music that preceded it, notably the first movement’s development section, which was fast and intricate in a now-reminiscent way. Other sections of Ravel’s score tended toward the crisp and matter-of-fact. Soft and lush passages only appeared in some subsidiary themes and in the trio section of the scherzo, which spread itself out like a warm blanket. The pizzicato return in this same movement, by contrast, spit fire with its clear, precise notes. Still, that was mild next to the dramatically vicious attacks in the opening unison of the finale.
The Esmé Quartet’s real specialty is tackling the largest works of the genre, which see the ensemble combining grace and drive with ideal balance and expression, overcoming these masterpieces’ inherent challenges. The group’s members displayed their skills in Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131. This enormous work — about 40 minutes in this performance — consists of seven movements of varying lengths, played without breaks. It’s possible for a listener to get lost, especially in the fourth movement’s theme and variations, whose varied parts, by themselves, sound like half a dozen movements stuck together.
The Esmé Quartet’s performance fostered neither murkiness nor confusion. The movements were clearly marked and distinct in character while flowing neatly together. The ensemble’s realization of the entire piece belied the reputation of Beethoven’s late quartets as crabbed and difficult. This lucid presentation came off as warm, even friendly. The group was especially impressive in the long fugue of the first movement. Simple trade-offs and careful balances made this potentially daunting music direct and easily intelligible.
The Esmé Quartet concluded the evening with an encore of Benjamin Godard’s striking arrangement of Robert Schumann’s “Träumerei” (Dreaming), the long-held notes in the accompaniment making this sound more like a transcription of an organ composition than a piano one.
