West Cork Chamber Music Festival: Bantry event off to a fine start
West Cork Chamber Music Festival artistic direcor Francis Humphrys with Cllr Caroline Cronin at the event reception. Picture: Karlis Dzjamko
Last week’s heatwave broke just as the 10-day West Cork Chamber Music Festival opened on Friday night and a cool mist rolled over the hills in Bantry. There’s a perception of chamber music, and perhaps even this festival in particular, as being somewhat niche, but over its history the festival has expanded in every direction to dispel such notions.
Director Francis Humphrys continues to unearth rarely heard works and programme challenging music alongside more familiar repertoire, yet has also introduced a children's programme and a 14-event free festival fringe with workshops and concerts throughout the West Cork area.
A highlight of Saturday's six concerts was Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova and Danish cellist Andreas Brantelid, both festival favourites returning to perform together for the first time. They played Debussy and Rachmaninov in the library at Bantry House with a chemistry that felt like it would have taken years to develop.
Brantelid's unique phrasing found an ideal partner in Fedorova's expressive piano, neither dominating in a compelling performance. Debussy's shifting colours were followed by the expansive lyricism of Rachmaninov, while Fedorova's physical expression, almost dancing at times as she plays, was balanced by Brantelid's understated poise.
The terraced gardens seen through the windows behind them provide a lush backdrop, the clear acoustic and elegance of the library justifying its reputation as the festival's finest venue, while its tree-lined avenue approach and breathtaking views over Bantry Bay delight the arriving audience and artists anew each year.
Denmark's Novo Quartet made an impressive festival debut. Their morning Coffee Concert in St Brendan's Church paired two Haydn quartets, played with restraint and finely judged ensemble, before they returned that evening to Bantry House for Mozart and Ligeti in a concert broadcast live on RTÉ Lyric FM and relayed across Europe.
They brought tasteful clarity and lightness to Mozart's Quartet No. 15 in D minor before tackling the sharper contrasts and shifting moods of Ligeti's First String Quartet, clearly relishing its searing dissonances, whispered passages and fleeting moments of beauty, a huge variety of music from one ensemble in a single day.
The morning Coffee Concerts remain an ideal introduction for those wishing to dip their toes in, the reception tent a welcoming place to meet fellow audience members each morning. The atmosphere throughout the festival is refreshingly informal, with an anything-goes dress code, bubbly anticipation before performances, hushed reverence between movements but whoops and hollers in the applause.
The festival is an annual highlight for developing musicians as well as visiting stars. The first Young Musicians’ Concert on Saturday featured very young students from the Cork ETB School of Music. When the school was first invited to Bantry in 2011 they had no dedicated chamber music programme at all; now, 15years later, they fielded five ensembles, including a trio of 12-year old triplets from Ballincollig.
Many of these already accomplished young players will no doubt aspire to take part in the festival’s masterclass programme in future years. The programme sees five selected elite student groups from Ireland and the UK rehearse intensively throughout the week and appear in a series of daily concerts, culminating in the final Young Musicians’ Platform, a three-hour showcase on the last day of the festival. Open masterclasses with some of the finest visiting artists throughout the week offer a rare opportunity to see how these demanding chamber performance skills are shaped.
One of the most memorable moments of the weekend came late on Saturday evening as soprano Katherine Dain performed a rarely heard song cycle by Lili Boulanger. Her luminous voice singing French poetry of love unbearably lost, illuminated by Sam Armstrong's exquisite piano accompaniment, filled the candlelit library as the last of the daylight faded beyond the windows and the gardens disappeared into night.
By Sunday afternoon, members of a local choir were gathering with anticipation for a workshop led by Dain's vocal quartet in a new venue this year, the Marino Church, where earlier in the day the Gregory Walkers had delighted an audience of under 10s in an irreverent fairytale adventure featuring early Irish music.
Thirty-one years now after it began, West Cork Chamber Music Festival continues to attract music-lovers and world-class performers to this remote corner of Europe, without losing the friendliness and intimacy that distinguish the event. With plans for a new dedicated 270-seat performance venue, festival hub and education centre now awaiting planning permission, the festival’s extraordinary ambitions remain undiminished.
- The West Cork Chamber Music Festival continues until Sunday July 5
