AUTUMN SEASON 2021

With the support of funding from the Arts Council and RTE, the National String Quartet Foundation presents an autumn season offering 43 concerts nationwide, given by nine groups, all of them including Irish or Irish-based musicians. The Foundation is also grateful for the support of University College, Cork, Cork City Council and Cork County Council and for the ongoing collaboration of the National Concert Hall in presenting these concerts in Dublin

We will do our best to ensure details given here are correct but in these difficult times there may still be changes.

ALL VENUES WILL REQUIRE ADVANCE BOOKING THIS AUTUMN AND AUDIENCE CAPACITIES MAY BE LIMITED

 
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Esposito Quartet

Mia Cooper
Anna Cashell
Joachim Roewer
William Butt

Mozart - Quartet in F major K.590
Ian Wilson - ‘Across a Clear Blue Sky’
Korngold - Quartet No.1 (Irish premiere performances)

Ian Wilson’s ‘Across a clear blue sky’ (after Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Horace and the Thunder’), was written in response to the attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001. The Esposito Quartet opens this autumn season with performances of the work marking the twentieth anniversary of that atrocity. The programme opens with Mozart’s great F major quartet from 1790, famously written for the cellist King of Prussia and concludes with Korngold’s first quartet, completed in Vienna in 1923 and being heard in Ireland now for the first time. This beautiful quartet lives in the fairytale sound world of late romanticism (Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht is recalled, especially in the slow movement) and also clearly holds the seeds which led to Korngold’s later fame as a film composer.

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ConTempo Quartet

Bogdan Sofei
Ingrid Nicola
Andreea Banciu
Adrian Mantu

Haydn - Quartet Op.74 No.3 ‘Rider’
Dave Flynn - ‘The Cranning’
Dvorak - Quartet Op.96 ‘American’

The ConTempo Quartet presents Dave Flynn’s remarkable trad - classical crossover string quartet which won the 2004 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Composers Prize. The composer writes: This piece is heavily influenced by the traditional music of my native Ireland. There are no traditional Irish melodies in the piece; however throughout the work's four movements there are techniques, modes, rhythms and feelings common to traditional Irish music. The programme opens and closes with popular classics by Haydn and Dvorak.

The Vanbrugh

Keith Pascoe
Katherine Hunka
Simon Aspell
David Kenny
Christopher Marwood

Mozart - String quintet in C major K.515
Brahms - String quintet in F major Op.88

The Vanbrugh and their guests present two of the greats from the string quintet repertoire. Adjectives have been heaped on Mozart’s C major quintet – elegant , sublime, majestic, joyful, bewitching… call it what you will, they are all testament to its timeless appeal. And then the Brahms F major quintet, written a century later is also all of these things and more. Written in the summer of 1882, it was a work that Brahms was particularly fond of, and from the gorgeous opening melody, through the exquisite slow movement, to the high octane finale, it is easy to see why.

The National String Quartet Foundation is Chamber Music Partner to UCC

Haydn - Quartet Op.50 No.6 ‘Frog’
From Les Vendredis:
Sokolov - Mazurka
Lyadov - Sarabande
Kopylov - Polka
Siobhan Cleary - Carrowkeel
Debussy - Quartet

The Callino Quartet was formed at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 1999 and went on to enjoy a successful international career, including winning second prize in the 2008 Tromp International String Quartet competition in the Netherlands. Their programme opens with the 1787 ‘Frog’ quartet, yet another masterpiece by Josef Haydn, and also includes some of the lovely pieces written for a long running series of Friday night musical gatherings in 1880s St Petersburg. Siobhan Cleary’s Carrowkeel was inspired by the spirituality of a neolithic village near Sligo and the concert ends with Debussy’s magnificent string quartet.

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Sonoro Quartet

Mona Verhas, violin
Jeroen De Beer, violin
Séamus Hickey, viola
Paul Heyman, cello

Haydn - Op 76, No.4 ‘Sunrise’
Cormac McCarthy - ‘Murus’
Schubert - Quartettsatz D703
Beethoven – Quartet in F minor Op.95               
Bartok - Quartet No.1

(programmes will be drawn from the above)

The Sonoro Quartet are an outstanding young string quartet based in Amsterdam and setting out on an exciting career with the backing of the Netherlands String Quartet Academy. The group features Cork violist Séamus Hickey, winner of second prize in the 2019 Amsterdam National Viola Competition, who is emerging as one of Ireland’s finest young musicians. The quartet will travel on to Budapest after this tour to take part in the 2021 Bartok World Competition for string quartets. Their programme will include the premiere performances of ‘Murus’, a new work by Cork composer and jazz performer Cormac McCarthy, commissioned for this tour by the Foundation with funds from the Arts Council and Cork Orchestral Society.

Gealán Quartet

Eoin Ducrot
Brendan Garde
Fiachra de hOra
Paul Grennan

Mozart - Quartet K.575
Sam Perkin - Quartet No.1
Fanny Mendelssohn - Quartet in E flat major

The four wonderful players that make up the exciting new Gealán Quartet come together for the first time for this tour. Their programme includes Sam Perkin’s fine 2011 string quartet alongside works by Mozart and Fanny Mendelssohn.. Mozart’s 1789 D major quartet was famously written with an unusually prominent cello part, a compliment to its cello-playing dedicatee, the King of Prussia. Fanny Mendelssohn was the older sister of Felix Mendelssohn and her imaginative and elegantly lyrical string quartet was composed in 1834.

We regret that Gina Maria McGuinness is unable to play this tour and are grateful to Brendan Garde for taking her place at short notice

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Lir Quartet

Mia Cooper
Siobhan Doyle
David Kenny
William Butt

with Christopher Marwood, cello

John Kinsella - ‘On hearing Purcell and Shostakovich at Bantry House - June 2008’
Schubert - String quintet in C major

The Lir Quartet are back for their sixth tour for the Foundation and for these concerts they are led by Mia Cooper and joined by cellist Christopher Marwood for Schubert’s legendary string quintet. The programme opens with one of John Kinsella’s short, virtuosic and entertaining works for string quartet.

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The Vanbrugh

Keith Pascoe
Marja Gaynor
Simon Aspell
David Kenny
Christopher Marwood
Yseult Cooper-Stockdale

Mozart - String quintet in C major K.515
Dvorak - String sextet in A major Op.48

Two classics of the string quintet and string sextet repertoire performed by the Vanbrugh and their guests.

The National String Quartet Foundation is Chamber Music Partner to UCC

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Navarra Quartet

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore
Charlotte Bonneton
Sascha Bota
Brian O’Kane

Henriëtte Bosmans - Quartet
Jane O’Leary - ‘The Passing Sound of Forever’
Bartok - Quartet No.3
Dvorak - Quartet in G major Op.106

The Navarra Quartet are among the leading quartets on the world stage and they join us this autumn with a wonderfully varied programme including a lovely work by Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans, Jane O’Leary’s atmospheric ‘The Passing Sound of Forever’, Bartok’s electrifying third quartet and Dvorak’s magnificent and rarely heard G major quartet

Ficino Quartet

Elaine Clark
Siun Milne
Nathan Sherman
Ailbhe McDonagh

Mozart - Quartet in C major K.465 ‘Dissonance’
Deirdre McKay - ‘mr shah stares to the heavens’
Ligeti - Quartet No.1 - ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’

Ficino Ensemble was formed by Artistic Director Nathan Sherman in 2012 as a flexible group aiming to perform popular chamber music alongside lesser known works that deserve to be appreciated. The Quartet features four outstanding musicians who are building an impressive reputation and an exciting repertoire. Their fascinating programme opens with the joyful ease of Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ Quartet, moves into Deirdre McKay’s contemplation of ‘the vast quietude of space’ and ends in the alternately riveting and beautiful Bartokian world of Ligeti’s first quartet.