THE ESPOSITO QUARTET
Mia Cooper, violin
Anna Cashell, violin
Joachim Roewer, viola
William Butt, cello
Programme:
Mozart - Quartet in F major K.590
Ian Wilson - ‘Across a Clear Blue Sky’
Korngold - Quartet No.1
Ian Wilson’s ‘Across a clear blue sky’ was written in 2009, inspired by Seanus Heaney’s poem ‘Horace and the Thunder’, written following the attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001. The Esposito Quartet opens this autumn season with performances of the work marking the twentieth anniversary of that atrocity. The programme opens with Mozart’s great F major quartet from 1790, famously written for the cellist King of Prussia and concludes with Korngold’s first quartet, completed in Vienna in 1923. This beautiful quartet lives in the fairytale sound world of late romanticism (Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht is recalled, especially in the slow movement) and also clearly holds the seeds which led to Korngold’s later fame as a film composer.
The Esposito Quartet comprises four of our most distinguished musicians with a combined wealth of experience as recital artists, orchestral leaders and teachers, who have been playing as a quartet since 2010. Their national tour this autumn forms part of the National String Quartet Foundation’s Beethoven 250 celebrations. The Quartet's name honours Michele Esposito, pianist and composer, who for forty years from 1888 was the initiator for much of the chamber music making in Dublin through the establishment of The Royal Dublin Society concert series.
Mia Cooper, violin
Mia Cooper has lived in Dublin since her appointment as leader of the RTE Concert Orchestra in 2006. She previously held principal positions with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and City of London Sinfonia, has appeared as guest leader of many of the UK's symphony orchestras. Equally at home as a chamber musician, Mia has participated in chamber music festivals, in Ireland, the UK, France, India, and Lithuania. Mia studied with renowned pedagogue Yossi Zivoni at the Royal Northern College of Music, and continued her training at the Paris Conservatoire. She teaches violin at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Anna Cashell, violin
Outside of her work with the Esposito quartet she performs regularly with her husband the pianist Simon Watterton and is a member of the Adderbury Ensemble and the Irish Chamber Orchestra. With the ICO she has performed in Heidelberg, the Wiener Konzerthaus, Würzberg, Rheingau the Lincoln Center and the Konzerthaus in Berlin.
She regularly freelances with a number of orchestras in the UK such as the City of London Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and the Northern Sinfonia. She has also performed and recorded with the Crash ensemble in America and Dublin and has recently co-commissioned a new solo violin work by the New York based composer Stephanie Anne Boyd.
Joachim Roewer, viola
Born in East Germany, Joachim Roewer graduated from the Hochschule für Musik “Franz Liszt” Weimar and the Orchesterakademie of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1994 he moved to Ireland to become principal viola with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, a position which he has held ever since. He has also worked as principal viola with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Camerata Ireland. On numerous occasions he appeared as soloist with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, recently alongside Anthony Marwood in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante.
Joachim Roewer is a passionate teacher and a busy chamber music player. Outside his work with the Esposito String Quartet he was invited to perform with the Vogler Quartet, the Vanbrugh Quartet and the ConTempo Quartet and since 2013 he works as Artistic Director of the annual international Killaloe Chamber Music Festival. Joachim teaches viola and chamber music at the Cork School of Music and the MA course for classical string performance at the World Academy at the University of Limerick.
William Butt, cello
William Butt enjoys a busy career as soloist, chamber musician and is professor of cello at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. On the concert platform he has performed extensively throughout Ireland, the UK, Europe and the Far East. He is a much admired exponent of the solo repertoire, having performed and broadcast numerous works for this medium by contemporary composers, as well as the formidable solo sonatas by Kodaly and Ligeti and the suites of Bach and Britten. Of his recording of the Britten suites, the Observer wrote: ‘Warner have found a worthy successor to Rostropovich, for whom Britten wrote these three suites... Meticulously played, with the passion and commitment the composer discerned in their dedicatee, these elegant, eloquent pieces could not have been entrusted to a safer pair of hands’
He has performed and broadcast all the major concerti, in 1997 he gave the Irish premiere of the Walton concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra, in 2001 the Dvorak concerto with the NSO and 2003 a tour of the Schumann concerto with the NSO. As well as a performance of the Protecting Veil by John Tavener with the Hibernian Orchestra he undertook a series at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in 2004 with the orchestra of St Cecilia and Barry Douglas in which he played the Dvorak, Elgar, Shostakovich (No 1), Tchaikovsky Rococo variations, and both Haydn concerti in three concerts over a two week period. He has also performed and broadcast the cello concerto by Victor Herbert with the Ulster orchestra. He plays on a fine cello made by Giovanni Grancino in Milan (1690).