INIS QUARTET

Molly O’Shea & Anna Mitchell, violins
Fiachra de hOra, viola
Zoë Nagle, cello

Beethoven – Quartet in F minor Op.95
Fanny Mendelssohn – Quartet in E flat major
Shostakovich – Quartet No.9 Op.117

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. Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of the better known composer Felix Mendelssohn, has in recent years been accorded long overdue recognition as composer of more than 400 fine works. She wrote her elegantly lyrical, at times impassioned string quartet in 1834, just a few years after the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert. The virtuosic last movement is especially memorable. 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.

Tickets available soon.