A bassist’s answer to the marching band: a waltzing string quartet.

Only the four accomplished musicians of Graffiti Classics also danced a lively sailor’s hornpipe, an Irish jig and the cancan, as they took the audience on a whirlwind tour of European music through the ages.

Saturday evening’s performance began in a theatrical fashion: a cloud of dry ice, dramatic lighting and the rumbling bass of the opening chords of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, before moving on to the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Thereafter, Cathal O Duill and his fellow musicians explored the wide range of music performed on stringed instruments — from traditional folk melodies like Irish reels, sailors’ hornpipes and Appalachian fiddle music, to highly evocative classical pieces like Bach’s Air on the G String, Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons and Ravel’s Boléro. It was all interspersed with lively quips and accompanied by dramatic movement and audience participation.

Most of the music would have been recognisable to the audience, some sadly reduced — as Mr O Duill pointed out — to elevator and ‘on hold’ telephone music, but performed in such a physical style that the audience was encouraged to experience it in an entirely new way. One striking example was Boléro, which began with the quartet lying on the floor of the stage. As the melody passed from instrument to instrument, the musician playing sat up, causing the audience to engage with the music using the sense of sight as well as hearing, and thus being drawn into the totality of the piece. Another way in which pieces were brought to life was through the evocation of the setting. The introduction to the hornpipe, for instance, was a dexterous manipulation of the instruments to evoke the creaking of rigging and spars of a sailing vessel while gulls cried overhead. The performance concluded with a highly energetic rendition of Offenbach’s Can Can in which the musicians manage to perform the piece in perfect time and tune while high stepping around the stage.

There was opportunity for audience participation, which those present took up enthusiastically — clapping the rhythm of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No 5 and singing the chorus of the traditional Hebrew piece Hava Nagila with gusto. The exuberance of these highly talented performers was transferred to the audience who were left breathless by the fast pace at which the musicians segued from one piece to the next, the virtuosity of the musicians and the perfect comic timing. This audience member at least, came away convinced that they had achieved their declared aim “to make classical music wickedly funny and fantastically exhilarating for everyone, young and old”.

For the full list of Festival shows visit: bermudafestival.org.