Part of the National String Quartet Foundation’s summer tour of Cork and Kerry, the Raja Quartet is an exciting new quartet featuring three of our finest emerging musicians together with acclaimed American violinist Claire Wells.

Their programme opens with what is thought to have been Beethoven’s very first string quartet, his elegant and virtuosic D major quartet Op.18 No.3. Webern’s rather unimaginitively named ‘Langsamer Satz’ (slow piece) is, in fact, a beautiful and passionate love song to his future wife, written in the rich late Romantic soundworld of his teacher Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht. Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw has written several very popular short pieces for string quartet and Plan and Elevation is one of the loveliest, in five short sections. The Raja Quartet will end with the first of many quartets written by French composer Darius Milhaud. With clear influences of Debussy and Ravel, it is charming, lyrical and joyful, a real discovery and a gorgeous end to this programme.

The Raja Quartet

Phoebe White, violin
Claire Wells, violin
Martin Moriarty, viola
Callum Owens, cello

Programme

Beethoven: String Quartet Op.18 No.3 [1800]
Webern: Langsamer Satz [1905]
Caroline Shaw: Plan and Elevation [2015]
Milhaud: String Quartet No.1 [1912]