The Lir Quartet

Waterford Music is collaborating with The National String Quartet Foundation to bring The Lir Quartet to Waterford. The Lir Quartet formed in 2016 at Barry Douglas’s Clandeboye Festival. The Quartet has been touring this programme throughout 2024 and is performing it in Waterford as part of a four-venue autumn tour.

The programme features Fanny Mendelssohn, whose 1834 string quartet remained unpublished until 1988 but is now a core and much-loved work in the quartet repertoire. This will be followed by a new quartet by Kerry composer Harry O’Connor.  A graduate of MTU Cork School of Music, Harry is continuing his composition studies at Oxford where the Castalian Quartet premiered his fine Summer Idyll earlier this year. Brahms’ C minor quartet is one of the greats, its dramatic and impassioned outer movements contrasting with the sublime beauty and lyricism of the Romanze and the relaxed musings of the third movement.

The musicians in The Lir Quartet are accomplished performers in their own right. Siobhán Doyle has performed as a soloist with the Dublin Symphony Orchestra and the Orlando Chamber Orchestra. Kirsty Main has recently performed with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and was a Britten-Pears Young Artist in 2018. Ed Creedon has performed with the Vanbrugh Quartet and Camerata Ireland, and is releasing an album of contemporary chamber music works with Crash Ensemble. Killian White was the first cellist to be awarded the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Music bursary, which is the largest classical music bursary in Ireland and one of the largest in Europe.