Live music review: West Cork Music Chamber Music Festival
The West Cork Music Chamber Music Festival’s commitment to contemporary music was demonstrated from the off, with the Danish String Quartet playing Hans Abrahamsen’s 10 Preludes to begin the opening concert. They tore into it bristling with confidence. For those of us for whom such atonality remains somewhat impenetrable, we could still admire the quartet’s unity of attack and tone and their take-no-prisoners approach.
Janacek’s Kreutzer Sonata, played by the British Doric String Quartet, was superb. Their fluent grasp of the Czech composer’s musical language brilliantly conveyed a sense of maddening obsession, claustrophobia and the dark foreshadow of fate.
