The Vanbrugh & Friends plays at University Concert Hall this Sunday April 21 from 3.30pm.
The performance is the final in a series of four springtime Sunday concerts being hosted by (UCH) as part of the 2024 Limerick Classical Concert Series.
The 2024 Series also marks the 30th anniversary year of UCH, which became the first purpose-built concert hall in Ireland when it was opened on the University of Limerick campus.
The 1,038-seat auditorium has since attracted performances from some of the biggest names in entertainment including Johnny Cash and June Carter, James Taylor, Billy Connolly, Leslie Garrett, Van Morrison, The King’s Singers, Jimmy Carr, Sir James Galway, Christy Moore and the late Sinead O’Connor.
The Vanbrugh and their guests present a wonderfully contrasted programme in which each work is for string quartet plus a second viola.
This Sunday’s concert features Keith Pascoe and Marja Gaynor (violin), Simon Aspell and Ed Creedon (viola) and Christopher Marwood (cello) performing the works of Boccherini (String Quintet in E major G.402), Beethoven (String Quintet in C minor Op.104) and Dvorak (String Quintet in E flat major Op.97).
UCH Director Sinead Hope commented, “This year’s Concert Series has been hugely successful with people from across the Mid-West and beyond coming to venue to enjoy some unforgettable classical performances. The Irish classical music scene is thriving, and we are proud to provide to be able to provide a platform for gifted up and coming and established musicians and singers.”
PROGRAMME
Boccherini: String Quintet in E major G.402; Beethoven: String Quintet in C minor Op.104 and Dvorak: String Quintet in E flat major Op.97.
Boccherini was a contemporary of Haydn and an even more prolific writer of string chamber music; based in Spain for most of his adult life he developed a distinctive style of composition which never fails to delight.
Cellist-composer Luigi Boccherini was the quintessential composer of quintets, whose lovingly crafted works reside in a secluded, shadowed space enjoyed by lovers of melancholy. The twelve quintets for two violins, two violas and cello have yet to reach the full light of day, despite their innovative harmonies and surprising turns of events.
This is the very last of his well over one hundred quintets for various combinations. Beethoven wrote his darkly beautiful C minor piano trio Op.1 No.3 in 1795 and it became one of his most popular chamber works. He published this string quintet arrangement in 1819. West Cork Music’s Francis Humphrys writes eloquently of Dvořák’s viola quintet: ‘Its unquestioning overflowing of delicious tunes marks it as belonging to an age of innocence, unlike the intellectual questing of most contemporary music, which is entirely alien to Dvořák’s world. Instead we have an irresistibly infectious joy in music-making’
