Chamber Music Series: Esposito Quartet: White Man Sleeps

Mia Cooper, violin
Anna Cashell, violin
Joachim Roewer, viola
William Butt, cello

Haydn String Quartet in E flat major Op.33 No.2 The Joke [1781]
Kevin Volans White Man Sleeps [1982]
Dvořák String Quartet in E flat major Op.51 Slavonic [1879]

The wonderful Esposito Quartet has toured in every NSQF season since 2018, always bringing warmth and energy to their music-making.

​​​​​​​Haydn’s E flat major quartet The Joke is the second of his revolutionary Op.33 set of quartets, in which conversational ease, rhythmic playfulness and sly humour redefined what a quartet could be. Its famous finale, with its teasing false endings, remains one of Haydn’s most delightful inventions.

Kevin Volans’ White Man Sleeps offers a dramatically different soundworld: spare, rhythmic and hypnotic. Drawing on traditional African dance music, the piece was originally written for two harpsichords, viola da gamba and percussion, but Volans was persaded to re-work it as a string quartet for the Kronos Quartet and it became perhaps his most popular and memorable work.

Dvořák’s E flat major quartet Op.51 is steeped in the warmth, lyricism and rhythmic vitality of Czech folk music. Its flowing melodies and dancing rhythms bring the programme to a joyful conclusion.

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. 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 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.

Outside of her work with the Esposito quartet Anna Cashell 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. 

Born in East Germany, Joachim Roewer graduated from the Hochschule für Musik Weimar and the Orchesterakademie of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  In 1994 Joachim decided to leave Germany to seek a new and exciting musical home for himself and moved to Ireland to become principal viola with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. For 13 years he was Course Director of the international ConCorda Chamber Music Course for Strings and he is a member of the Esposito String Quartet. Joachim teaches viola and chamber music on the MA programme in Classical Strings at the Irish World Academy of Music at the University of Limerick

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. 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 Dvořák concerto with the NSO and 2003 a tour of the Schumann concerto with the NSO. He plays on a fine cello made by Giovanni Grancino in Milan (1690).  

Presented by NCH in association with the National String Quartet Foundation