Molly O’Shea and Anna Mitchell – violin
Kseniia Yershova – viola, Zoë Nagle – cello.
They are a Fellowship Quartet at ConCorda.
About ConCorda, Chamber Music Course for Strings
Venue
St. Barrahane’s Church, Castletownshend, P81 AH51
Tickets €20
Online, at the door, at Thornhill Electrical Skibbereen
or text/call 086 226 4797
Programme
Beethoven – Quartet in F minor Op.95 [1810]
Ravel – Quartet in F major [1903]
Shostakovich – Quartet No.9 Op.117 [1964]
The Inis Quartet was formed for the 2023 West Cork Chamber Music Festival and also takes part in the 2023 ConCorda summer chamber music course as the National String Quartet Foundation Fellowship Quartet.
They open these concerts with one of Beethoven’s most dramatic quartets, famous for its brevity and sudden changes of mood. It was composed in 1810, a year after the Battle of Wagram between Napoleon’s France and Austria left 74,000 casualties in a single day, just outside Vienna. Ravel wrote his string quartet in 1903 while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. Inspired by Debussy’s quartet from ten years earlier, it took the sound world of the quartet even further into exotic new realms; the quartet divided opinion at the time (Ravel’s teacher Fauré famously branded the last movement ‘a failure’), but it quickly became one of the most popular and acclaimed works in the repertoire. The concert ends with Shostakovich’s wonderful ninth string quartet, written in 1964 and full of vivid characterization, expression and contrast. The stark and cataclysmic vision of the fourth movement leads to an extraordinary finale concluding with a long, exhilarating and life-affirming build-up.
The Inis Quartet was formed for the 2023 West Cork Chamber Music Festival and also takes part in the 2023 ConCorda summer chamber music course as the National String Quartet Foundation Fellowship Quartet.
They open this concert with one of Beethoven’s most dramatic quartets, famous for its brevity and sudden changes of mood. It was composed in 1810, a year after the Battle of Wagram between Napoleon and Austria left 74,000 casualties in a single day, just outside Vienna. Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of the better known composer Felix Mendelssohn, has in recent years been accorded long overdue recognition as composer of more than 400 fine works. She wrote her elegantly lyrical, at times impassioned string quartet in 1834, just a few years after the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert. The virtuosic last movement is especially memorable. The concert ends with Shostakovich’s wonderful ninth string quartet, written in 1964 and full of vivid characterization, expression and contrast. The stark and cataclysmic vision of the fourth movement leads to an extraordinary finale concluding with a long, exhilarating and life-affirming build-up.