THE West Cork Chamber Music Festival opens this Friday, June 23rd until Sunday, 2nd July.
There are some tickets still available for many of the concerts which run from morning to late night in Bantry House, St Brendan’s Church and venues throughout Bantry.
Mozart features throughout this year’s programme with all six of his magical set of quartets performed throughout the ten day festival.
The opening concert closes with the world-renowned Pacifica Quartet playing the last and most famous of these quartets, the Dissonance – light-filled music sparkling with joy.
Mozart specialists the Armida Quartet play his very first quartet followed by his quartet in D minor, famous for being composed while his wife Constanze was giving birth and on the last day of the festival, they start the day with three Mozart quartets – music centred almost exclusively on preoccupations of colour, one of the boldest, most prophetic conceptions of the famous composer’s art.
The festival’s popular 11am coffee concerts in St Brendan’s Church present works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Biber, Handel, Telemann and more, performed by soprano Anna Devin, Ensemble Vintage Koln, Baroque specialists Ensemble Diderot and poet Ruth Padel.The stellar line-up also includes star violinists Mairéad Hickey, Viviane Hagner, Nurit Stark and Alina Ibragimova; pianists Cédric Pescia and Cédric Tiberghien; singers Caroline Melzer and Lotte Betts-Dean; Ragazze, Pacifica, Armida and Ardeo Quartets; and many more.
Highlights include world premieres of Donnacha Dennehy’s Quartet, Sally Beamish’s Piano Trio and the European Premiere of Sean Shepherd’s String Quartet No 3 alongside an extensive programme of music by Schumann, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Bartók, Haydn, Schubert and many more.
Free family-friendly fringe concerts bring the music to the wider West Cork area and there will be pop-up performances in Bantry town. Ireland’s only instrument exhibition runs throughout in the Old Methodist Church.
The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Failte Ireland, Crespo Foundation and Cork County Council.
