Q

How and when did Esmé Quartet form?

Esmé

Esmé Quartet is based in Cologne, Germany. We started out as a chamber music project team from the Musikhochschule Köln and loved playing together, so we decided to try out as a professional quartet.

Q

How did you decide upon the name Esmé?

Esmé

Esmé is an old French word meaning “to be loved”. Not only did we like the meaning of the word, but it is a lovely name that can be pronounced easily in many languages.

Q

Who influenced you on your journey to become classical musicians?

Esmé

Heime Müller, former violinist of the Artemis Quartet. We call him our “quartet papa”. He was our first mentor and helped form us as a group.

Q

What is your daily practice routine?

Esmé

There is no routine in our practice process. We come prepared with our individual parts. We meet, start playing together and see where the music takes us.

Q

What were you looking for in a new member to make sure you would work well together?

Esmé

The change happened very naturally. We asked Dimitri to join us on a US tour that March, and from the very first rehearsal it felt as if we had been playing together for a long time.

Some of this is hard to explain objectively, but something in our energy and sense of timing matched really well. We also found that we value the same things in music and string quartet playing. In that interim period, we had many pieces to learn rapidly, and it put us to the test from the beginning.

Q

Has the new line-up changed the dynamics of the music you perform?

Esmé

It is quite usual for a string quartet’s sound to change with a new member. Our sound is evolving as well. One of the fun parts of this is that it makes us look at pieces we have played a lot in a new light.

Of course, we always want to keep this sense of rediscovering a piece of music each time we perform it. Having a new member naturally adds a new point of view to the piece.

Q

How do you feel before performing as a quartet compared with performing alongside an orchestra? Are the feelings different?

Esmé

In terms of nerves or anything like that, we feel pretty similar in all these situations. What is different with playing with an orchestra is that we are a little further apart. Therefore, maintaining unity as a quartet whilst projecting our music above the orchestral texture is quite different from the more intimate experience of playing a string quartet in a chamber music venue.

For example, right before our concert in Portsmouth, we were playing in Wigmore Hall in London, and in such a special venue we could look for very soft dynamics and colours. That would not be something we would do when playing a string quartet and orchestra piece.

Q

Whilst touring, what do you do to keep your energy levels up?

Esmé

Quality sleep and eating! We plan our meals meticulously, looking up restaurants ahead of time. We also like to eat before the concert, which we know a lot of musicians prefer to wait until after the concert to do. But we do it before — and after!

Q

Is there any food or drink you miss from your home countries of South Korea and Belgium?

Esmé

Wonhee: I think Korean rice grown in Korea has special qualities, especially cooked in a stone pot.

Yuna: Kalguksu — Korean traditional noodles with hot broth.

Our violist has family by marriage in Korea and often craves Korean food while on tour.

Dimitri: From Belgium, I miss good Belgian fries and mussels. From Korea, I like sundubu-jjigae.

Yeeun: I really miss my family’s kimchi.

Q

Are there any countries or venues you particularly want to visit and perform at?

Esmé

We are looking forward to our first tour in Australia next May, which is a place all of us have been curious to see all our lives. We love travelling and discovering new places, and we feel very lucky that quartet life allows us to do that.

Q

How does the Korean haegeum feature in Yessori, and do you plan to tour with the piece?

Esmé

Our second album, Yessori, contains a piece called “Yessori”, which is about imitating the sound of the haegeum. The album was released in late March this year, and we do plan to tour with this piece next season.

Q

As individuals and as a quartet, what have been the professional highlights of your careers?

Esmé

We won first prize at the Wigmore Hall Competition, which helped us launch our career as a quartet. Our debut concert at the Lucerne Festival was also a memorable one.

Recently, we performed at the Tongyeong International Music Festival in Korea with our new violist, Dimitri, and that may have been musically our favourite performance so far. Hopefully more highlights and good memories will continue to happen in our quartet career!