A Wigmore Hall competition laureate celebrates its tenth birthday
The Strad Issue: October 2026
Description: A Wigmore Hall competition laureate celebrates its tenth birthday
Musicians: Esmé Quartet
Works: Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E flat major. Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet no.6 in F minor. Seo: river at the end of the mind
Catalogue number: ALPHA 1271
It’s eight years since the Esmé Quartet won the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, and ten years since it formed. That said, this celebratory recording – its first since Dimitri Murrath replaced founder violist Jiwon Kim in 2023 – is surprisingly poignant in theme. With ‘Nui’ the Korean word for ‘sister’, it pairs Fanny Mendelssohn’s 1834 String Quartet in E flat major with the anguished F minor Quartet written by her brother Felix in the aftermath of Fanny’s sudden death in 1847 – shortly before his own premature demise the same year. Between them sits a new work, river at the end of the mind, commissioned from Korean–American composer Juri Seo.
These are sleek, precise performances: highly poised, but high on expressivity too, not least Fanny’s Romanze. The various solo cries across Felix’s Adagio and finale are full of anguish, while in the latter, the Esmé violins mean serious business as they slam, vibrato-less, into their double-stopped stabs (1’30”).
Seo’s evocation of a peaceful, distant place where loved ones gather offers a sleek compositional blending of Western Romanticism with Eastern folk style, and of solid and more rhapsodic phrasing. This is all deftly realised by the Esmé, with some effective lucidity and detail of colour over the tautest contrapuntal writing.
CHARLOTTE GARDNER
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