Booking Now Open for 2024 West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Booking is now open for this summer’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival which runs from 28 June – 7 July.

Ireland’s most exciting celebration of chamber music takes place in Bantry with a programme of fifty concerts featuring eighty musicians over ten days and nights.

Five international quartets are at the heart of the programme – Signum Quartet from Germany, Dudok Quartet from the Netherlands, the all-woman Nightingale Quartet from Denmark, the youthful Sonoro Quartet and Chiaroscuro Quartet which is made up of musicians from Russia, Spain and France.  

 These are joined by a stellar line-up of world-class musicians including the winner of the 2024 Leonard Bernstein Award, cellist Anastasia Kobekina; violinists Fanny Clamagirand and Esther Hoppe; pianists Roustem Saitkulov, Anna Fedorova, Boris Giltburg and Julius Drake; violist Dana Zemtsov; clarinettist Matthew Hunt; Baroque ensemble Camerata Øresund;  wind quintet Ensemble Midtwest; mezzo soprano Fleur Barron; soprano Anna Devin and many more.

The musicians follow a fifty year trail of classical masterpieces begun by Haydn and Mozart and culminating with Beethoven and Schubert. A key milestone on this journey will be the series of ten violin sonatas by Beethoven played by Fanny Clamagirand and Roustem Saitkoulov. Haydn’s string quartets, Beethoven’s late quartets and Schubert’s overwhelming String Quintet feature, as well as works by Bach, Vivaldi and Handel performed by Camerata Øresund and soprano Anna Devin.

Schumann’s magical Carnaval, Mendelssohn’s youthful Octet, Brahms’ Piano Quartets and Fauré’s love-potion Violin Sonata will be performed on the Bantry House stage while, mid- week, mezzo soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Julius Drake present Schubert’s famous Winterreise in St Brendan’s Church.

 Diversions along the way include a collection of works by Danish composers,  the rescheduled world premiere of Roxanna Panufnik’s Faithful Gazelle, Dudok Quartet’s performance of Three Tributes by composer-in-residence Bushra El Turk, a co-commission recently premiered in Amsterdam; and musical visits to Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and South Africa.

Free family-friendly Fringe concerts bring the music to the wider West Cork area and there will be pop-up performances in Bantry town. Festival masterclasses run daily throughout the town and Ireland’s only instrument exhibition will be held in the Old Methodist Church. 

Full programme can be found on www.westcorkmusic.ie

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