Classical music love story in Bantry

YOU can talk about anything with West Cork Chamber Festival director and West Cork Music chief executive Francis Humphrys. Aer Lingus strikes. Education. Farming. Even Taylor Swift, though he’s far from enchanted by the star, and isn’t joining the Swifties at Croker.

‘I think the concert takes place during the festival. Some of my staff are actually going up to Dublin – to my absolute disgust!’ jokes
Francis.

In truth, Francis has nothing against Swift, indeed it was the idea of having to travel to hear good music that inspired the Chamber Festival almost 30 years ago.

‘I was fed up of having to travel to Cork, Dublin, London, Amsterdam to hear good music,’ explains Francis.

‘There was a gap of bringing top level music here, and Bantry cashing in on that. It’s a fantastic combination of place and event. I was just a music lover who wanted to hear great music,’ he explains. ‘I came here from UK in the 70s, and one of the things I was missing was being able to go to great concerts.

‘In my student days I used to queue on the pavement at Covent Garden to go to opera. That’s what you did to get cheap tickets. Nowadays people pay vast sums to go and hear concerts in huge auditoriums with thousands of people where you might be a very long distance from the stage.’

He compares this to the Chamber Festival, where you get ‘world class musicians literally a metre away from you. The venues are all very small and intimate. And the musicians are there all week. They don’t just fly in and fly out. They come and stay in Bantry. They go to eat in Bantry. Anyone can tap them on the shoulder and say ‘look forward to hearing you tonight’, or whatever. And that’s where the masterclasses come in is that all these young musicians get this opportunity to meet and play with these top, top class musicians.’

The Chamber Festival is focused on Bantry but the fringe takes in other venues, from Cork Airport to Ballydehob, Castletownbere to Ahakista, Baltimore to Whiddy, Skibbrereen to Schull.

But Bantry is the focus, and beautiful Bantry House a spectacular festival hub. ‘At the very beginning back in ‘96, Bantry House was prepared to host the festival. Egerton Shelswell-White is gone from us now (his daughter Julie runs Bantry House) but his vision for the house was always to have music there so he bought into that. Then the RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet based in Cork were very keen to have a festival they could participate in.

With the RTÉ link, from the very first festival all the concerts have been recorded. And we now have an international audience of over 50 million with radio audience through the European Broadcasting Union. It is broadcast worldwide. So we get audiences in Brazil, the United States, Australia, New Zealand. So you might have 300 people attending a concert in Bantry but it might be several million listening in.’

It has global audience but quickly also got local buy-in.

‘People realised what we were doing for Bantry. And from very early on, we’ve done these totally boring but worthwhile economic impact surveys every single year. Last year’s festival was worth just under €4m to Bantry with people coming from outside Bantry, whether it’s from Dublin or from elsewhere in Ireland; a lot also come from Holland, from the UK, France, Germany, USA, Canada you name it. So they all bring money to Bantry.

‘Also, we got a lot of national funding. So we’re worth a lot to Bantry. And people very quickly realised this so that even if they were not particularly interested in chamber music, they could see the full restaurants, the full B&Bs, the full hotels, and the people walking around with cellos and violins strapped to them. So it was small to begin with, but it’s huge now.’

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival features 18 Irish premieres, including four world premieres, with composers from 11 countries, and three continents. This year’s programme features world premieres by Roxana Panufnik and Sam Perkin as well as a three part co-commission by the Festival’s composer-in-residence, Bushra El Turk.

On Monday, July 1st, at 7.30pm, the audience at Bantry House will experience the premiere of Roxana Panufnik’s The Faithful Gazelle. Clarinettist Matthew Hunt joins the Signum Quartet to perform this music which is based on a classic Afghan folk tale. It was commissioned in 2021 but has been twice postponed due to the pandemic.

On Wednesday July 3rd at 7.30pm in St Brendan’s Church, Dudok Quartet perform Bushra El-Turk’s String Quartet Three Tributes. This is a set of pieces that take the form of three portraits of Levantine female singers who lived during the Nahda period, a cultural renaissance in the Arab speaking world that took place between the mid-19th century and the early 20th century. This is a co-commission with Borletti Buitoni Trust and String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam.

The world premiere on Thursday July 4th is performed in the Coffee Concert in St Brendan’s Church at 11am. Composer Sam Perkin celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the County Cork Harpsichord in his new work for harpsichord and lute, performed by Camerata Oresund, Marcus Mohlin and Peter Spissky.

The festival features several free shows, as well as masterclasses, while the candlelit late-night concerts at Bantry House offer another chance to enjoy the unique festival atmosphere. Like Francis says, this is a festival for all ages and all music enthusiasts, and signals the start of Bantry’s festival season.