Harry O’Connor
Summer Idyll [2023]

Performed by the Lir Quartet
Triskel Christchurch, Cork, 10th August 2024

Summer Idyll - Fantasy for String Quartet was composed during the winter period of 2022-23, and revised in August 2023. The piece is a free-form exploration of pastoral summer imagery, and was artistically informed by the idyllic rural scenery of my local area in the south-west of Ireland. Images of verdant farmland, trees in full leaf and winding country lanes in intense summer heat, with all their colours, scents and sounds, form the backdrop to which this music is the soundtrack. Summer Idyll was first performed publicly by the Castalian String Quartet at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford, UK on 14th February 2024.

The work is a single movement, which roughly divides into four sections, as follows:

The piece opens with a chorale-like passage, out of which emerges a short song-phrase in the first violin, inspired by aspects of Indian classical music. The violin continues to decorate the chorale until a declamatory plucked chord announces the next section, marked ‘Blues’.

This ‘Blues’ section evokes a lilting and sultry atmosphere, with fragmented viola solos punctuating the texture. A rock-inspired violin interjection bursts through briefly, only to disappear ‘off into the bushes’ as suddenly as it appeared. The ‘blues’ resumes, until gentle pizzicato chords again signal a new section. 

The subsequent ‘Recitatives’ allow great soloistic scope for the cello and second violin respectively. Inspired by the Indian tambura, the drone-like stillness cushioning these solos depicts soft summer wind and gently rustling leaves and grasses. Three familiar chords once again close this section. 

A vibrant fanfare follows, with flying solo lines increasing with intensity until a triumphal climax of indulgently bright colours. 

The initial chorale texture then returns, and once again gives way to the first violin’s opening song. Marked ‘pure joy’, the player’s solo reaches higher and higher…

Return to NSQF Irish Quartet Archive

Harry O’Connor graduated from the MTU Cork School of Music in 2021 with a First Class Honours BMus (Hons) degree. In September 2024, he graduated with an MSt in Music (Composition) from the University of Oxford and in the same month was announced as winner of the National Concert Hall’s Jerome Hynes Young Composer’s Award 2024.

In 2019 his 'Fantasy for Piano Solo' received its first performance by concert pianist Santa Ignace, and later that year his 'Pathetic Fallacy' for string ensemble was premiered by the Scotia Ensemble. The former piece was shortlisted in the Classic Pure International Vienna Composition Competition 2019. In 2020 his work 'Introduction and Dance for Piano Solo' won the New Ross Piano Festival composition competition and was performed at the 2021 festival by Finghin Collins. The same year, his 'Fantasy for Piano Solo' was selected for the final round of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra’s 2020 Call for Scores in Los Angeles, USA. In 2023, Harry was selected as the winner of the 2023/24 Irish Heritage Composition Bursary with his piece 'Diptych: Two Winds' for solo piano, which was subsequently premiered in London, UK.

During his postgraduate degree, Harry had his music workshopped by several high profile musicians and groups, including the BBC Singers. In October 2023, his piece '3 Old Irish Miniatures' was performed by Jonathan Eyers and Thomas Eeckhout, and in November his piece 'Atlantic Dawn' was performed by postgraduate music students at the University of Oxford. 

In February 2024, his string quartet 'Summer Idyll' was premiered by the Castalian String Quartet at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, UK. Later that same year it was taken around Ireland by the Lir String Quartet on tours run by the National String Quartet Foundation.

In September 2024, Harry undertook the artist residency at the Fish Factory Creative Centre in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland.