View from the Green Room: Young Performers Concert dazzles at Waterford's Mount Congreve
Musicians who performed at the Waterford Chamber Music Festival at Mount Congreve Estate.
The sun dazzled the Mount Congreve estate and the Yershova sisters dazzled the attendance at the Young Performers Concert as part of the Waterford Chamber Music Festival.
Both girls are soloists in their own right. Kseniia has performed multiple times with Odessa Regional Philharmonic and the West Cork Chamber Music Festival on viola, as well as violin and has also appeared with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Kseniia’s sister Yevlaliia made her solo debut on the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin last year. Both players bring a joy to their performance that is a delight to witness.
And they bring a big programme to Mount Congreve. A Handel Passacaglia is short but crammed with improvisations and variations, while the Mozart Duo for violin and viola opens with an apparently simple tune that becomes a whirlwind of musical wizardry. Spohr’s duet for two violins is just the ticket for a young performers' concert given that he wrote the piece when he was just 12 years old. It’s a fascinating duet with both violins swapping roles on a tuneful melody.
Spohr isn’t the only young composer on show here this morning. 23-year-old Milo McCarthy is in his third year of the B Mus at the Cork School of Music and was recently awarded First Prize in the Feis Ceoil for composition. This morning’s ‘3 Fragments de L’Antiquité’ features a lyrical Nocturne that is strikingly silent, an ornate and elusive Arabesque that skips and plays along and a final Passacaglia inspired by a vision of monks chanting as they move prayerfully along – their final chants become desperate cries that led me to wonder what those hooded lads were getting up to.
A Bartok duo for violins delights with its folksy, Bohemian feel and the Sarasate ‘Navara’ for two violins and piano is lively and full of virtuoso show-off moments with great dynamic between the players.
A top-class concert from Knesniia and Yevlaliia Yershova, two young sisters from the Ukraine, who have made their home here with us.
