How Cordula Merks' Tomodachi Quartet Unites Players from the SF Symphony and Ballet Orchestras

It can be difficult to keep an ensemble together over a long period of time, but Cordula Merks has been managing for over a decade.

Her Tomodachi Quartet ("friends" in Japanese) is an example of the kind of telepathic chemistry that chamber groups develop over time. Of course, it helps that two of her fellow musicians, Amy Hiraga (viola) and Peter Wyrick (cello) are married, and that the other violinist in the group, Mayumi Hiraga Wyrick, is their daughter. "Without me, they would be a family quartet, but with me, it's friends," Merks quips. Wyrick and Hiraga were also longtime San Francisco Symphony (SFS) players, and Mayumi is a first violin with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra (SFBB) alongside Merks. (To perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Concerto No. 12 in A Major K.414 for Piano and String Quartet, the quartet was joined by Amy Vardanega on piano.)

Cordula Merks' Tomodachi Quartet with Audrey Vardanega (piano).

The group came together shortly after Merks arrived in San Francisco from Seattle to assume her position as concertmaster of SFBO, orbiting around Roy Bogas, a concert pianist who played with SFBO from 1958 to 2022. A mutual friend from Seattle put them in touch, and as Merks says, "I started playing with these guys the moment I moved. I felt so lucky right away to have found this chamber music home."

Cordula Merks' Tomodachi Quartet with Audrey Vardanega (piano).

"There are so many interesting people and musicians in the Bay Area, but I play the most with these people," Merks says. "It's nice to find people who are musically on the same wavelength. We don't even talk that much when we rehearse. We just really enjoy playing and discovering lots of music together, and we get along really well."

For her Faculty Artist Series recital in September, Merks tackled several classics of the repertoire that were new to the Quartet. And Antonín Dvořák's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96, known as his "American quartet," despite being a beloved staple of quartets, was, in Merks' words, "just a big gap in my rep. Everybody plays it; a lot of people play it in high school, but somehow I never did until this summer."

Cordula Merks' Tomodachi Quartet with Audrey Vardanega (piano).

The Tomodachi Quartet can also be heard in Berkeley as part of a decades-long series called Chamber Music Sundaes, held at The Hillside Club of Berkeley. Wyrick and Merks are co-artistic directors of the series, along with Jill Brendal, a cellist retired from SFS.

"We play at most ten concerts a year," Merks says of the Quartet. "It's not our bread and butter so we get together when we all have time. But we really, really love it."

Learn more about studying violin or chamber music at SFCM.