Gaelán Quartet coming to Mayo as part of national tour

The Gealán Quartet are coming to Ballina Arts Centre early next month as part of a national tour that will start in neighbouring Galway.

The quartet have chosen to commission Derry composer Michael Doherty to write a new string quartet for the tour. Doherty has a busy career as composer and orchestrator for films and TV series, as well as for the concert hall.

This new work will be bookended by two great masters: Schumann and Shostakovich. Schumann wrote his gorgeous A minor quartet in 1842. In the same year, he composed four more chamber music works, two of which were also string quartets.

Composed only 17 years after Beethoven’s death, one can hear the spirit of the master linger, but there are also glimpses of the richness future music was to bring.

The evening ends with Shostakovich’s heart-rending eighth quartet, which he wrote in Dresden in 1960. Its official dedication to ‘the victims of fascism and war’ was one imposed by the Soviet authorities, and disguised a wider dedication to victims of all totalitarianism, Shostakovich himself among them.

This tour is presented in association with the National String Quartet Foundation, who are supported by their principal funders the Arts Council and RTÉ Lyric FM.

The Gealán Quartet will open their tour in Galway (venue TBC) on Tuesday, November 7, before moving on to Ballina Arts Centre the following night (Wednesday, November 8). The show will start at 8 p.m. For more information, call (096) 73593 or log on to ballinaartscentre.com.

Following the shows in Galway and Mayo, the tour moves on to Cork (November 9), Tinahely (November 11) and Dublin (November 12).