The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is delighted to introduce its virtual twin, Bantry and Beyond. As the Festival musicians could not come to Bantry, the Festival has gone to the musicians. Festival-goers will become virtual travellers to destinations around Europe and USA. They will visit famous concert halls in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Chicago; historic Great Houses of Ireland and the Netherlands; a centuries old abbey with a fabulous library; Palaces in Prague and Vienna; old churches in London, Bantry and Amsterdam; a vaulted tunnel under a vanished convent in Cologne; studios in Amsterdam and Berlin; and Music Centres in Hungary and Italy.
The thirty Festival concerts will commence with four themed week-ends starting in Vienna on 28 May before moving to daily concerts 25 June – 4 July followed by a coda of five concerts later in July. The concerts will be streamed by the platform OurConcerts.live.
Curating thirty filmed concerts with sixty musicians in seventeen venues with sixteen different production teams in ten countries in two continents during a pandemic has shown how flexible the music sector can be under pressure. Musicians, camera teams, sound engineers and venues have given much of their time to help bring these thirty performances into being.
Great music in the hands of great musicians is always an intoxicating mix. A virtual recording by top production companies has one advantage over the live concert, namely the close-up intimacy of the performance, a front-row experience with quality audio. There will be World Premieres of new quartets by Deirdre Gribbin and Garth Knox played by Pacifica and Ragazze Quartets with Irish premieres of works by Lera Auerbach and Finola Melville.
Bantry and Beyond opens with a Classical Prelude of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms that leads the way into a powerful Russian series from Mussorgsky to Shostakovich. Solo performances feature Ibragimova, Tiberghien, Gluzman, Fedorova, Petcu, Fejervari and Grynyuk. There are great Quartets, a cello series, singers from Ireland, France and Germany, great violinists and period instrument ensembles.
West Cork Chamber Music Festival is generously supported by the Arts Council, Crespo Foundation, Fáilte Ireland and Cork County Council as well as many individual donors and subscribers.
For further information, visit the websites of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival (westcorkmusic.ie) and OurConcerts.live ( ourconcerts.live).
