26. Main Evening Concert

26. Main Evening Concert
The American soprano, Lucy Fitz Gibbon will join Marmen Quartet for the World Premiere of Deirdre Gribbin’s song cycle to texts by Irish poet Jessica Traynor, a powerful new work commissioned by the Festival. Mendelssohn’s Second String Quintet could almost be described as a mature version of the famous Octet he wrote when he was only sixteen using a similar concertante style with the first violin soaring above an almost orchestral accompaniment. After the interval, Chiaroscuro Quartet play the first of the late Beethoven quartets, composed exactly 200 years ago. In many ways it is the most approachable of the set with the conventional four movements, whose opening is haunted by a thunderous motto theme giving way eventually to a wonderful singing Adagio, where time stands still.