Ensemble Vintage Köln & Ruth Padel

In June 2023, in three concerts in St Brendan's Church, Bantry as part of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Ruth Padel read three sequences of poems between The Rosary (or Mystery) Sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, written around 1676 and played by Ensemble Vintage Köln, led by violinist Ariadne Daskalakis.

St Brendan's Church

Tuesday 27 June 11am

St Brendan's Church

Mystery Sonatas - Joyful

This is where the story of the virtuoso solo violinist begins, somewhere around the last quarter of the Seventeenth Century. Biber, the greatest violinist of his time, composed this cycle of fifteen sonatas for solo violin and basso continuo as meditations on the Mysteries in the life of the Virgin Mary. In addition these sonatas occupy a unique place in the entire history of music for being the most extreme example of the application of scordatura where for each sonata the strings are mistuned to unusual notes. This makes live performance extremely difficult as the violin must be re-tuned between sonatas. To cover this pause Ruth Padel has created a series of poems to read out while Ariadne Daskalakis re-tunes her violin. This series of three performances gives you a unique opportunity to hear this seldom performed masterpiece

Tuesday 27 June 10pm

St Brendan's Church

Mystery Sonatas - Sorrowful

The five Sorrowful Sonatas takes the story as seen and felt by Mary from the Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha. The deliberate mis-tuning of these sonatas delivers an extraordinarily muted sound, in some cases the four strings are compressed within an octave’s span. Despite this mutilation of the unfortunate instrument the beauty of the music shines through. Ruth Padel is famous for her ability to create poems about music. Her cycle of poems commissioned by the Festival continues in the tuning pauses to give us a seamless performance.

Thursday 29 June 11am

St Brendan's Church

Mystery Sonatas - Glorious

There can be no stranger mis-tuning than the one used for the Resurrection. The two middle strings are switched around behind the bridge and inside the pegbox so that for the entire sounding length of the strings they are the other way around. The resonances which result are unearthly but beautifully apt for the description of sunrise on Easter Morning. After the Easter sunrise and the meeting with the angel whose countenance was like lightning and his raiment as white as snow, the great medieval Easter plainchant Surrexit Christus hodie takes over with the unique scordatura achieving an other-worldly sonority. The Ascension and Pentecost inspire equally impressive and extraordinary music, but the last two Sonatas where Biber can concentrate on his vision of Mary unimpeded by the Gospel story with a Praeludium e Ciacona result in music of stunning beauty and tenderness and warmth.