Chamber music instrumental to city’s vibrancy

Great Music in Irish Houses fills a gap in the capital’s cultural life, writes Alan O’Riordan.

IRELAND’S leading festival of chamber music was for four decades known as Music in Great Irish Houses. It has restyled itself as KBC Great Music in Irish Houses. So, is the music better? Are the locations less grand? It’s a combination of the two.

The festival still includes Kilruddery House in Bray; and Castletown House, Co Kildare, Ireland’s finest Palladian building; but now also the Waterways Ireland visitor centre (or Box on the Docks) at Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, and the botanic gardens in Glasnevin.