The West Cork Chamber Music Festival has announced its programme for this year, featuring fifty concerts as well as masterclasses, talks, workshops and fringe events in venues across Bantry, Co. Cork, from 28 June to 7 July.

The festival, which is now in its 27th year, will also present five world premieres and two Irish premieres throughout the ten-day event. On 1 July, the Signum Quartet and clarinettist Matthew Hunt will perform Roxanna Panufnik’s The Faithful Gazelle, a piece commissioned by the festival and inspired by a classic Afghan folk tale.

On 4 July, baroque orchestra Camerata Øresund will perform the world premiere of a new work for harpsichord and lute by composer Sam Perkin. The piece, which was commissioned by the festival, will be performed alongside works by Vivaldi.

Quartets
Five international quartets are at the heart of this year’s programme – Signum Quartet from Germany, Dudok Quartet from the Netherlands, the Nightingale Quartet from Denmark, the Sonoro Quartet, and Chiaroscuro Quartet, which is made up of musicians from Russia, Spain and France. They are joined by renowned 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 more.

The opening concert on 28 June at Bantry House will see the Signum and Nightingale quartets perform alongside violinist Fanny Clamagirand and pianist Roustem Saitkulov works by Schubert, Langgaard and Beethoven.

The Signum Quartet will also perform a series of concerts at the festival celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the end of apartheid, titled Bridging the Chasm. This will include performances of Haydn’s Lark Quartet (29 June) and a commissioned work by traditional African musician Dizu Plaatjies.

Dudok Quartet will perform with Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova on 5 July at Bantry House, a programme of works including Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva’s Simurgh Quintet – a piece inspired by a 13th-century Sufi poem. The group will also perform works by Shostakovich, Roukens and Grażyna Bacewicz (6 July), and will perform with the Sonoro Quartet Mendelssohn’s Octet in E flat as part of the festival’s finale concert (7 July).

The festival will also present a series of coffee concerts in the mornings, featuring performances by Camerata Øresund, the Chiaroscuro Quartet, Marcus Mohlin, Peter Spissky and Esther Hoppe; a series of masterclasses, workshops and talks; and a performance of The Magdalene Songs by Deirdre Gribbin, Rhona Clarke and Deirdre McKay – a homage to the victims of the Magdalene Laundries.

Download the full programme below. For further details and booking, visit www.westcorkmusic.ie/chamber-music-festival. 

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