Arabella Quartet
Biography Arabella Quartet
Arabella Quartet
The members of the quartet hail from around the globe and first met at Yale University, where Causa and Kwok were serving on the faculty. A veritable United Nations of chamber music, they represent Denmark, Australia, Italy and France and carry on the pedigree of great European traditions and masters—the Paris Conservatoire, the University for Music and the Performing Arts Vienna, and the Menuhin Academy—as well as the influence of celebrated American ensembles, such as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Juilliard quartets. This mélange of musical training and backgrounds imbues their performances with distinctive freshness, inventiveness and musical depth.
In recent seasons the quartet has performed for Charleston Music Fest, SC; the Chelsea Music Festival, NYC; the Hammond Performing Arts Series Temple Emanuel Chamber Series, Bynum Recital Series, Mistral Music in MA; Cosmos Club and Kenwood Chamber Society Series, Washington DC. The quartet remained committed to their audiences through the global pandemic with high-quality pre-recorded concerts and live-streams. They look forward to live performances for audiences in the 2021-22 season and beyond, maintaining their commitment to education and engagement through workshops and masterclasses, while also appreciating that the technological and media advances necessitated by the pandemic offered opportunities to connect with a wider and more diverse audience than ever before.
The Arabella Quartet's debut CD, titled In the Moment was released by Naxos Records in May 2017. An innovative program that explores time, place and mood through a series of short pieces, the disc was named Album of the Week by Classic FM who declared it, "an album well worth dipping into, exceptionally well played.” The world's leading string periodical, The Strad Magazine, described In the Moment “as a fine disc, the Arabella digging deep to produce performances of great intensity and poise.” Upcoming projects include recording a set of six quartets by Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges for Naxos Records to be released in 2022.
Proposed programs for upcoming seasons include a deep dive into the string quartets of Saint-Georges - arguably the first composer of African descent to contribute to the Western classical tradition and one of the earliest composers of string quartets in France - paired with string quartets by the great Impressionists, Debussy and Ravel. As well as works presented under the theme of Autobiography - including Beethoven’s epic String Quartet in a minor, Op. 132, Smetena’s String Quartet in e minor From my Life, Eleanor Alberga’s Remember and Arvo Pärt’s mystical Psalom, among others.
In addition to performing as the Arabella Quartet, its members enjoy varied individual careers and bring to their quartet life a mature musicality and sense of equality. Julie Eskar is first concertmaster of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, as well as a founding member of the acclaimed Eskar Trio. Sarita Kwok holds the Adams Endowed Chair in Music and serves as Chair of the Department of Music at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Eskar and Kwok rotate in their roles as first and second violinists in the quartet. Ettore Causa is Professor of Viola at Yale’s School of Music. Alexandre Lecarme has been a member of the Boston Symphony orchestra since 2008 and holds the Nancy and Richard Lubin chair.
