Adam Barnett-Hart, violin
Brendan Speltz, violin
Pierre Lapointe, viola
Brook Speltz, cello

The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble serves as season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

The 2023-2024 season finds the Escher Quartet embarking upon a major project-performances of the complete cycle of quartets by Bela Bartók, culminating in a single concert performance of all six at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The first-ever performance of all six Bartók quartets in chronological order was given by the Emerson String Quartet in March 1981, also at Alice Tully Hall, in honor of Bartók’s centenary year.

Beyond Bartók, the Escher’s will return to many of the illustrious music centers and organizations in America, such as the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Duke University, Coleman Chamber Music Association, and Savannah Music Festival, among others.

The Escher Quartet has made a distinctive impression throughout Europe, with recent debuts including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Kings Place, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall, Les Grands Interprètes Geneva, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Auditorium du Louvre. The group has appeared at festivals such as the Heidelberg Spring Festival, Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy, Dublin’s Great Music in Irish Houses, the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, and the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia. Alongside its growing European profile, the Escher Quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at the Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Bowdoin Music Festival, Toronto Summer Music, Chamber Music San Francisco, Music@Menlo, and the Ravinia and Caramoor festivals.

The 2022-2023 season saw the release of two albums - string quartets by Pierre Jalbert and the Escher’s studio recording of the complete Janacek quartets and Pavel Haas quartet no. 2 with multi award winning percussionist Colin Currie (BIS Label). Recordings of the complete Mendelssohn quartets and beloved romantic quartets of Dvorak, Borodin and Tchaikovsky were released on the BIS label in 2015-18 and received with the highest critical acclaim, with comments such as “...eloquent, full-blooded playing... The four players offer a beautiful blend of individuality and accord” (BBC Music Magazine). In 2019, DANCE, an album of quintets with Grammy award winning guitarist Jason Vieaux, was enthusiastically received. In 2021, the Escher’s recording of the complete quartets of Charles Ives and Samuel Barber was met with equal excitement, including “A fascinating snapshot of American quartets, with a recording that is brilliantly detailed, this is a first-rate release all around” (Strad Magazine). The quartet has also recorded the complete Zemlinsky String Quartets in two volumes, released on the Naxos label in 2013 and 2014.

Beyond the concert hall, the Escher Quartet is proud to announce the creation of a not-for-profit organization, ESQYRE (Escher String Quartet Youth Residency Education). ESQYRE’s mission is to provide a comprehensive educational program through music performance and instruction for people of all ages. In addition, the quartet has held faculty positions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and the University of Akron, OH.

Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at each artist's summer festival: the Young Artists Program at Canada’s National Arts Centre; and the Perlman Chamber Music Program on Shelter Island, NY.

The Escher Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

The young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) had privileged access to a world of musical knowledge, and he absorbed all of it. Everywhere his travels as a keyboard prodigy took him—London, Paris, Milan, Vienna—he folded the best local practices into his compositional toolkit. Thanks to Joseph Haydn, Vienna was the epicenter of the string quartet, and Mozart wrote his finest early quartets during the summer he spent there as a 17-year-old.

Mozart wrote no more quartets before he moved to Vienna in 1781, but the publication that year of Haydn’s latest set revived Mozart’s interest, leading him to compose a series of quartets between 1782 and 1786, a period when he also befriended Haydn and played quartets with him for fun. He turned to the genre one last time after he visited the royal court in Berlin in 1789 and made a positive impression on King Wilhelm Friedrich II; Mozart added the String Quartet in D Major (K. 575) to his log of compositions a few months later, noting that it was intended for the Prussian king, but it appears that he was never paid for the commission, and the planned set of six quartets stalled after he finished just three.

String quartets at the time were often played by amateurs for their own entertainment, and the king was a decent cellist himself, so it’s likely that Mozart wrote this quartet anticipating that his royal patron would be part of the ensemble. There’s a lovely section in the Andante movement, for instance, where the cello answers melodic fragments from the first violin, delivered in matched phrases that could come straight out of a tender operatic duet. In the contrasting trio section of the Menuetto, the cello soars high into its treble range, with the violins and viola dropping down to provide accompaniment.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a child prodigy from a musical family, enrolled in the founding class at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 14. He went on to win the American Academy’s prestigious Rome Prize, which bankrolled his Italian residency from 1935 to 1937. During that time, Barber composed his String Quartet (Opus 11) as well as an adaptation for string orchestra of the quartet’s slow movement. It was that Adagio for Strings that launched Barber’s international career, when Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra debuted it on a radio broadcast in 1938. This mournful excerpt has been played at the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Leonard Bernstein, in the devastating war film Platoon, and in a televised performance at the BBC Proms four days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, cementing its status as The Saddest Music Ever Written, to borrow the title of Thomas Larson’s 2010 book on the Adagio.

This Molto adagio (“very slow”) movement, as it is marked in the original quartet, centers on a melodic gesture of three rising notes, creating a persistent sense of unfulfilled yearning and reaching. Drawn-out suspensions in the harmonies generate waves of tension and release while a grounded bass line progresses with glacial patience.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) might have been stuck forever in Prague, underpaid and unknown to the world, had it not been for an intervention on his behalf by the celebrated composer Johannes Brahms, who arranged for an introduction to his publisher in 1877. Almost overnight, Dvořák became an international star, famous for the Slavonic Dances and other pieces that embraced the folk traditions of his Czech homeland.

Despite having forged his reputation with short and simple compositions rooted in local color, Dvořák’s real calling (like Brahms before him) was to engage with the formal structures and traditions that had crystallized in the time of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. As a violist himself, Dvořák was particularly adept at writing string quartets, a format that had long been a proving ground for serious composers, and one that even Brahms had struggled to find his footing with.

Dvořák began his String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major (Op. 105) in March of 1895, as he was preparing to leave New York after several years spent there directing a new conservatory. He completed the score that December in Prague, having paused for several months to draft a different string quartet. After this final quartet, Dvořák pivoted away from abstract forms and dedicated his remaining years to tone poems and operas.

The String Quartet No. 14 begins with a slow introduction, a structure popularized by Haydn. This section previews the main theme of the first movement, making for a seamless transition into the fast continuation. Blurred boundaries between major and minor keys introduce the type of emotional ambiguity that is a hallmark of Czech folk music.

The second movement serves as the quartet’s scherzo, introducing “very lively” music in a three-beat pulse reminiscent of a Czech folk dance. The contrasting trio section has ample space to develop its alluring themes before it dovetails smoothly into a return of the original minor-key statement.

In the “very songlike” slow movement, the four voices harmonize with each other exquisitely, especially when the foreground melody drops into the inner voice of the second violin. A more insistent central section, driven forward by pulsing accompaniments, offsets the serene and tuneful treatment of the main theme. This pulsing makes a haunting return at the end.

The finale begins with a menacing solo from the cello, and the upper voices shudder in response with a tense dissonance. Then, as if with a shrug, the music slips effortlessly into the home key. It’s a testament to the particular ease and fluidity that Dvořák cultivated within the structures of “absolute” music, making the path through a rigorous form seem as natural as a stroll through the Bohemian countryside.

© 2024 Aaron Grad.