For their tenth anniversary, the Esmé Quartet pair Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat major — written in the final year of her life — with her brother Felix’s grief-stricken Sixth Quartet, composed in the immediate aftermath of her death. Between them sits a newly commissioned work by Korean-American composer Juri Seo, river at the end of the mind, inspired by the Korean folk song “Mother, Sister.” Titled Nui, the Korean word for “sister,” the album reflects on family, memory and loss, and on the quartet’s own decade-long bond as an ensemble.

Esmé Quartet