1. Opening Concert
A world premiere by Cork composer, Sam Perkin, marks the occasion of the opening of our 30th West Cork Chamber Music Festival! The composer promises his new quartet will be dazzling, celebratory and fun. The Ukrainian-French Tchalik Quartet will perform this exciting new work, which draws on the festival magic Sam discovered visiting our festival in his youth.
The Tchalik is a family Quartet, two brothers and two sisters. To follow, they will play Boris Lyatoshynsky’s gorgeous Second Quartet. The name Boris Lyatoshynsky does not exactly trip off the tongue, but his lovely A major Quartet is a revelation. It was written just over a hundred years ago in the ferment of optimism following the First World War and Ukraine’s short-lived independence from its monstrous neighbour.
Tchalik Quartet have recorded this remarkable quartet, whose opening bars seem to have by mistake wandered into the impressionistically coloured world of Ravel and Debussy. Anyone who adores that marvellous flowering of French string quartets in the first 25 years of the twentieth century will love this quietly beautiful music.
After the interval another Quartet of time-travelling musicians, the multi-national Ardeo Quartet go back something over 200 years to Beethoven’s revolutionary transformation of the possibilities of the string quartet with his 8th quartet. This quartet is famous for its serene and solemn slow movement conveying Beethoven’s sense of awe at the stately dance of the stars in the clear, dark night sky. The perfect way to end, before you step out into the quiet stillness of a Bantry evening!
