This year’s Dublin International Chamber Music Festival (DICMF) will take place from 7 to 12 June in venues across Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare. Formerly known as Great Music in Irish Houses, the festival took place online last year due to the pandemic. This year will be the festival’s first live event since 2019. 

On 7 June, the opening concert of the festival will feature pianist Hugh Tinney and the Carducci Quartet. They will perform Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, as well as a number of works by Schubert, at Killruddery House and Gardens. 

Siobhán Cleary’s new work Liadán for soprano and quartet will receive its world premiere in a performance by the Carducci and Sylvia O’Brien at the National Botanic Gardens (8 June). The concert will also feature Cleary’s The Dole of the King’s Daughter (2011) for voice, string quartet and tape, and works by Rebecca Clarke, Caroline Shaw, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn. On 12 June, Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe will perform with the Irish Chamber Orchestra a programme including Rosewoods by David Fennessy. The concert is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of both the festival and the ICO, and will be the first live performance of the work, which received its world premiere at DICMF last year, as part of a pre-recorded concert. The piece is a reinvention of a previous work, Rosewood (2011), which was composed by Fennessy for Shibe’s teacher, Allan Neave. Also included in this anniversary concert will be music by Vivaldi, Dvořák, Arnold and Elgar.

On 11 June, Dutch ensemble the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective will perform for the first time in Ireland. The concert will include Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet and works by MacDowell, Elgar, Frank Bridge and Britten. Bach’s Goldberg Variations will be performed by pianist Peter Tuite on 10 June at Dublin Castle’s Chapel Royal; and on 12 June, violist Rosalind Ventris plays a programme of Beamish, Maconchy, Lilian Fuchs, Amanda Feery, Imogen Holst and Bacewicz at Rathfarnham Castle. 

DICMF this year will also make a special tribute to the country’s frontline workers who served throughout the pandemic, with a concert featuring pianists Máire Carroll, Thérèse Fahy, Ruth McGinley, Veronica McSwiney and Fionnuala Moynihan (9 June). The concert includes a selection of works chosen by key figures from the pandemic, including Professor Luke O’Neill, and Professor Teresa Lambe, who co-developed the Oxford AstraZenca Covid-19 vaccine. 

For the full programme, see below. For booking, visit https://dicmf.com.