The National String Quartet Foundation presents two concerts this August by the Inis Quartet in partnership with Barrahane Music and Kenmare Buttermarket. This project is also supported by West Cork Music and the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras

Please click on the venue details below for booking information

INIS QUARTET

Molly O’Shea & Anna Mitchell, violins
Kseniia Yershova, viola
Zoë Nagle, cello

Beethoven – Quartet in F minor Op.95 [1810]
Ravel - Quartet in F major [1903]
Shostakovich – Quartet No.9 Op.117 [1964]

CASTLETOWNSEND - Thursday 10th August at 8pm - St Barrahane’s Church - presented by Barrahane Music
KENMARE - Friday 11th August at 6pm - Kenmare Buttermarket - presented by Kenmare Buttermarket

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.