Cathedral date for Vanbrugh and Vogler

Arts Plan and innovative community projects or no, it seems that not everybody in Sligo appreciates the arts in the form of the…

Arts Plan and innovative community projects or no, it seems that not everybody in Sligo appreciates the arts in the form of the arrival of the Vogler String Quartet from Berlin as quartet-in-residence in Sligo.

A public forum held during the Sligo Contemporary Music Festival last weekend heard tell of a school principal who didn't even greet or meet the internationally famous group that were coming gratis to tutor the school's students. Now, if it had been the Spice Girls, perhaps . . .

But audience appreciation is reported to be predictably at the opposite end of the scale of enthusiasm, as well you might expect it to be tonight, when the old and the new - the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet and the Voglers - combine for the first time in a performance at Sligo's St John's Cathedral of that most remarkable of teenage creations, the Mendelssohn Octet.

Each of the quartets can also be heard on their own, in works by Haydn and Bartok.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor