Strum | Jessie Montgomery (b.1981)

World Premiere String Quartet | Reena Esmail (b. 1983)

String Quartet in D minor, D.810 Death and the Maiden | Franz Schubert (1797—1828)

I. Allegro 

II. Andante con moto

III. Scherzo. Allegro molto — Trio

IV. Presto — Prestissimo

This program explores time and timelessness. How do we measure a moment? How do the moments that have come before inform who we are in this singular moment? The installment of Reena Esmail’s series of quartet miniatures, This is it, that we performed in Spring 2025 got us all thinking (and feeling) at the end of last season. Reena’s work invites us to fully inhabit the moment we’re living in and step away from our preoccupation with glances forward and back. Schubert’s music, and particularly his chamber music, somehow does both at once, inhabiting a sense of nostalgia while transporting us fully into each moment as it passes and transforms into the next.

Try as we might to live in the moment, the anticipation and excitement for Reena Esmail’s next chapter of This is it has very much had us looking forward. Commissioned by Sheffield Chamber Players and written expressly for SCP, Esmail’s piece invites us to inhabit the moment we’re living in now—right this very moment. ~ Sasha Callahan