The National String Quartet Foundation is delighted to welcome the recently formed Ora Qquartet to its touring programme. After several years enjoying playing together in various chamber music formations, these four outstanding musicians decided in 2023 to join as a string quartet and made their debut at Fuddlefest in August of that year. Projects in 2024 include a series of collaborative concerts in the Everyman, Cork, as well as this tour.
Haydn’s ground-breaking 1772 set of string quartets was written while the 40-year-old composer was Kapellmeister at the Eszterháza palace near Vienna. This is the last in the set and it is noticeably bright and optimistic in character, perhaps an antidote to the uncomfortably damp and marshy living conditions at the palace. Emma O’Halloran’s Dying is a wild night is a reflection on mortality inspired by events in the composer’s family. It began to take shape in 2017 as part of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival’s Composition Competition and underwent substantial revision before being premiered in its final form at the 2019 Festival. Written as a tribute to Purcell and premiered on the 250th anniversary of his death, celebrated English composer Benjamin Britten’s second quartet is a work of startling originality, surely one of the most important string quartets of the 20th century (Kai Christiansen, earsense.org)

Ora Quartet
Siun Milne, violin
Molly O’Shea, violin
Ali Comerford, viola
Yseult Cooper-Stockdale, cello

Programme
Joseph Haydn - Quartet in A major Op.18 No.6 [1772]
Emma O’Halloran - Dying is a wild night [2019]
Benjamin Britten - Quartet No.2 Op.36 [1945]