West Cork Chamber Music Festival 2016

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival celebrates its coming of age in the company of Beethoven, from an early string trio to his final string quartet, culminating in a single concert featuring one of his most adventurous quartets, his last violin sonata and the great Archduke piano trio.

In contrast the Festival can always be relied on to delve into unusual corners of the repertoire, one Coffee Concert features love songs by women composers from eighteenth century Italy, another alternates arias from Bach Cantatas with chorales from remote Swedish communities in a programme devised by Festival favourite, Maria Keohane, while a late-night concert sees a setting of Kafka texts for soprano and violin.

The Festival will explore a rich selection of major song cycles by composers as varied as Schubert, Janáček, Fauré, Ravel and Kurtág. Tenor Mark Padmore joins with the outstanding pianist Paul Lewis in Schubert’s Winterreise.

Two nights later he sings Janáček’s rarely performed Diary of One who Disappeared with pianist Julius Drake and French mezzo Anna Reinhold as the seductive gypsy girl.

The Festival marks two of the 1916 centenaries with new works by Irish composers. Visiting Quartets will be the Borusan from Istanbul, the Kelemen from Budapest, the multi-national Chiaroscuro led by Alina Ibragimova alongside Cork’s own Vanbrugh Quartet

For the full programme of events, click here

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