Contempo Quartet
Bogdan Sofei violin
Ingrid Nicola violin
Andreea Banciu viola
Adrian Mantu cello

Mozart String Quartet in D major K.499
Raymond Deane String Quartet No.7 (Dublin premiere)
Dobrinka Tabakova On a bench in the shade
Beethoven String Quartet in C major Op.59 No.3

Ireland’s longest established string quartet opens this autumn season of quartet concerts. Mozart’s D major quartet K.499 is one of the lesser played but its ingeniously intertwined lines create a fascinating and absorbing sound world.

Raymond Deane is one of our most celebrated composers and this is the first Dublin performance of his seventh string quartet. Dobrinka Tabakova has an ‘unwavering reverence for melody and clarity’ (Gramophone magazine), and her playful quartet On a bench in the shade takes its inspiration from ‘hot summers days, when people gather to talk in the shade’. Beethoven’s C major Rasoumovsky quartet completes the programme, its sparklingly virtuosic outer movements contrasting with a moody funeral march and a quaintly old-fashioned minuet.

Presented by NCH in association with the National String Quartet Foundation