The Quartetto Irina

A young string quartet born at Xenia Chamber Music Course

The Quartetto Irina was formed by 4 students (Giovanni Putzulu, Samuele Preda, Leonardo Vezzadini and Clara Ruberti) who came together as a quartet at the 2021 Xenia summer course at Pracatinat. The first piece they played (coached by Elizabeth Wilson) was Shostakovich’s 9th quartet, dedicated to the composer’s wife Irina, explaining why they chose IRINA as their group’s name. Since then they have had tuition with other teachers of the Xenia Course, and currently study in Claudia Ravetto’s class at the Turin Conservatoire.

Recently the Quartetto Irina was selected to perform a concert in the Turin Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2023/24 season. In May they will also perform a concert in the beautiful baroque hall of Palazzo Barolo, Turin, to raise money for the Maguire Fund.

At the beginning of 2023, as part of a continuing twinning project between the cities of Turin and Glasgow, two musicians from the Quartetto Irina were invited to participate in a concert on January 25 at the Glasgow Conservatoire to honour Holocaust Day. Giovanni Puzulu and Clara Ruberti played to a packed-out hall the Duo for violin and cello by Erwin Schulhoff, a Jewish composer born in Prague, who lost his life in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. The concert started with homage to Ukraine through a Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody performance, in which Giovanni performed as one of two violin soloists.

On 2022, the other two quartet members, Samuele Preda and Leonardo Vezzadini participated in masterclasses and concerts with the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) in Limerick, thereby continuing our long-standing partnership with the Concorda string players course run by the ICO.