Bookings brisk for chamber festival

A STELLAR international line is attracting strong interest in this year’s West Cork Music Festival which gets underway in Bantry from June 29th. 

Philippe Cassard was the first winner of the Dublin Piano Competition in 1988 and the most recent  winner of the triennial competition in 2015 was Nathalie Milstein, the first female winner, and both are appearing at this year’s event. 

Booking for the world-class chamber music festival which runs until July 8th is brisk.

Polish String Quartet,  Apollon Musagète, Quatuor Danel from Belgium and The Dudok Kwartet from Holland are other attractions. 

The 2018 programme will feature the world premiere of Deirdre Gribbin’s Kindersang, which marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht and the development of the Kindertransport movement that rescued 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazis. 

It also includes a focus on works by women composers, a celebration of Europe’s two most important living composers Sofia Gubaidulina and György Kurtág, and a performance of Messiaen’s Harawi.

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival presents a fantastic opportunity to hear all three of Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartets, five hidden gems by Mozart, all three violin sonatas by Brahms and three major works by Schubert. The Festival’s well deserved reputation for discovering exotic quintets continues this year and it also offers four major piano solo recitals, two rare song cycles, a pair of string sextets and much more.

The programme includes works by Kodály, TDebussy, Bartók, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. A Festival Fringe of free performances will run in venues all around Bantry, including Whiddy and Garinish Islands. Online bookings at www.westcorkmusic.ie  or phone +353 (0) 27 52788.