Internationally acclaimed quartet to perform film soundtrack classics at Warrenpoint Town Hall
When Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings accompanied the helicopter scenes in Platoon, audiences experienced the power of chamber music to intensify emotion on screen. That intensity is set to be experienced again in a concert at Warrenpoint Town Hall.
The internationally acclaimed Piatti Quartet will perform Barber’s great work, as well as other iconic string quartets by Philip Glass, Ravel, and Shostakovich on Saturday 14th March at 1pm.
Presented by Newry Chamber Music, this concert will show the versatility and adaptability of the string quartet in capturing tone, emotion, and drama across a range of film genres and is sure to delight both classical enthusiasts and cinema buffs.
The concert will open with Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, from his soundtrack to Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, the 1985 biographical drama directed by Paul Schrader and based on the life of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.
Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has excelled as a composer for film in recent years, as the Piatti Quartet will show with his spare and spectral quartet from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood.
The concert concludes with Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 (1960). The work was composed in Dresden while Shostakovich was working on the soundtrack for the Soviet-East German film, Five Days-Five Nights. Although not written for a specific movie, the piece was inspired by the composer’s surroundings, with Dresden still reeling from the bombing of the Second World War. It has subsequently been used in numerous soundtracks due to its dramatic, emotional tone.
Also on the programme is Ravel’s String Quartet, which has featured on Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), among other films, and Samuel Barber’s deeply poignant Adagio for Strings, Op. 11, which has become an emotional leitmotif representing loss and grief.
The Piatti Quartet – Michael Trainor (violin), Emily Holland (violin), Miguel Sobrinho (viola), Jessie Ann Richardson (cello) – are the Resident Quartet at Kings Place, London. They have enjoyed enormous critical acclaim, with composer Julian Anderson calling them, “living treasures of chamber music”; The Strad has praised their “profound music making”; while classical music critic David Rowe has said: “The Piatti Quartet is surely one of the very best – ever”.
Since their prizewinning performances at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, they have performed at the Wigmore Hall, London; The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; Flagey Radio Hall, Brussels; and the Aldeburgh Festival.
Contemporary music has been ever-present in The Piatti Quartet repertoire with major commissions and dedications from modern composers Mark-Anthony Turnage, Emily Howard, Charlotte Harding, Joseph Phibbs, and particularly Anna Meredith.
Tickets are £20 (General admission) and £10 (Under 18s) from https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newry-chamber-music/the-piatti-quartet/2026-03-14/13:00/t-yzqgnyq.
For more information see https://newrychambermusic.org.