Esposito Quartet
Mia Cooper violin
Anna Cashell violin
Joachim Roewerl viola
William Butt cello
Saturday 25th October 2025 | 7.00pm
Tickets are €28 per person and can be purchased below. The concert commences at 7pm and doors will be closed until the next break in music.
Programme:
Raynaldo Hahn - String Quartet No.1 in A minor [1939]
Seóirse Bodley - String Quartet No.4 [2007]
Glazunov - Three Novelettes Nos.2,3,5 [1886]
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.1 [1938]
Venezualan-born Raynaldo Hahn was a popular figure in the musical salons of Paris before the first world war and is best known for his many songs influenced by the style of Massenet and Fauré, as well as his operettas and musical comedies. His lovely first string quartet from 1939 looks back to the influence of Ravel, Erik Satie and Fauré.
Seóirse Bodley, who died in 2023, was one of the most important composers of twentieth-century art music in Ireland. His fourth quartet was commissioned by RTÉ for the Vanbrugh Quartet’s 21st anniversary in 2007.
Alexander Glazunov was a member of the "Belyayev Circle" in St Petersburg, a group of composers connected with the wealthy patron, amateur musician and publisher Mitrofan Belyayev who supported emerging composers and musicians, frequently holding salons in his palatial estate. It was for one of these gatherings in 1886 that a 21-year-old Glazunov composed his Novelettes for string quartet. This concert includes three of them: Orientale, Interludium in modo antico and All’Ungharese
Shostakovich wrote his short, charming and brilliant first quartet in 1938, shortly after the successful premiere of his fifth symphony. He started writing it on the second birthday of his daughter and said that he ‘visualized childhood scenes… and bright moods associated with spring’
Esposito Quartet
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 Dvorak 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).
