Borromeo String Quartet at NEC’s Jordan Hall

As part of my new life as a student of the cello, I am going to chamber music concerts. Last night I heard the Borromeo String Quartet play a faculty recital of three string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Borromeo String Quartet

The Borromeo String Quartet is the faculty String-Quartet-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts.

The musicians are:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin
Kristopher Tong, violin
Melissa Reardon, viola
Yeesun Kim, cello

Program

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, op. 18 no. 1
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, op. 59 no. 3

intermission

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat Major, op. 127

My Preparation

I prepared for this concert by listening to the appropriate individual lectures from The String Quartets of Beethoven by Robert Greenberg and The Great Courses.

I also downloaded the score for String Quartet No. 1 and tried to follow along while listening to a recording by the Artemis Quartet, but I frequently got lost because the tempo was faster than I was capable of following.

Concert Notes

This concert was held at NEC’s jewel of a music venue, Jordan Hall. I arrived 35 minutes before the start and waited in line with the other early birds until the doors were opened. I was able to get an excellent seat in the middle of the third row. The hall was about a third full.

The Borromeo Quartet strode onto the stage promptly at 7:30 p.m. They played all three quartets beautifully and expertly.

I love the second movement of String Quartet No. 1, which has a time signature of 9/8 (although I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t read the score). The third movement (scherzo) is witty and would be fun to play.

The second movement of String Quartet No. 9 is also very interesting to me as a beginner cellist because the cello part involves a lot of pizzicato, sometimes almost in the manner of an acoustic jazz bass.

String Quartet No. 12, the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, sounds modern and experimental, with many dissonances and unusual sounds.

During the concert, I focused my attention on Yeesun Kim, the cellist. She played flawlessly, displaying the ability to immerse herself completely in the music.

According to the notes on NEC’s website, “Yeesun Kim plays a Peregrino Zanetto cello, circa 1576, one of the oldest in the world.” This means her cello is 450 years old! It is a beautiful instrument.

Other Notes

Robert Greenberg’s course about Beethoven’s string quartets, mentioned above, is well worth the investment. I obtained the audio version of his course more than ten years ago through my subscription with Audible for about $13.

Emily E. Hogstad at Interlude published an article, Ranking the 16 Beethoven String Quartets: Which Is Best?, on September 21, 2026, in which she uses the metric of popularity on YouTube.

My mother, who was a cellist, used to play string quartets with friends in the living room of our house in Portland, Oregon, when I was a child. I expect they played string quartets by Beethoven, but I don’t know, and my mother died in 2022, so I can’t ask her.