Celebrating 21 years of chamber music

There’s just over a week to go before the West Cork Chamber Music Festival opens its doors. Celebrating its 21st anniversary, it runs from July 1st to 9th with a packed programme of concerts.

Tickets have been selling more quickly than ever before and a number of concerts are now sold out. However the good news for those who have yet to book, is that there are still some tickets left for other concerts in St Brendan’s Church and Bantry House.

The festival welcomes a dazzling array of singers including the young French mezzo soprano Anna Reinhold. She performs a remarkable programme of early 18th century song by Italian women composers in St Brendan’s Church on Monday, July 4th at 11am. She returns on Thursday, July 7th in the Crespo Series concert at 4pm in St Brendan’s Church to sing two French song-cycles – Ravel’s ‘Chansons Madécasses’ and Fauré’s ‘Chanson d’Eve’.

Fans can catch her once again in the week when she appears in the late night concert in the same venue on Friday, July 8th, joining tenor Mark Padmore, pianist Julius Drake and vocal trio Voice for Janáček’s ‘Diary of one who Disappeared’.

Another singer appearing in Bantry will be German soprano Caroline Melzer who will sing György Kurtág’s ‘Kafka Fragments’, accompanied by violinist Nurit Stark. With 40 fragmentary texts, each a compressed story, Kurtág’s well-known piece is like a complete festival in itself and will be performed in St Brendan’s Church on Monday, July 4th at 10.30pm.

Elsewhere during the Festival, works by Brahms, Beethoven, Bartók, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach, Shostakovich, Handel and more will be performed by eighty five world-class musicians.

Ireland’s only instrument-making exhibition runs throughout the festival while young musicians are tutored by virtuoso performers in the festival’s renowned masterclass programme.

 The complete festival programme can be found and online booking can be made  at   www.westcorkmusic.ie or by ringing 027-52788.

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Failte Ireland, Crespo Foundation, RTE lyric fm and Cork County Council.