We’re delighted to announce that the programme of the 2024 West Cork Chamber Music Festival is now available. The printed brochure will be available in January.

Become a Friend of West Cork Music and avail of priority booking.

• Platinum and Gold Friends – booking opens Thursday 18th January
• Silver Friends – booking opens Thursday 15th February
• General Booking – opens Thursday 14th March

Images – First row: Anna Fedorova, Signum Quartet. Second row: Fanny Clamagirand, Nightingale Quartet. Third row: Sonoro Quartet, Esther Hoppe. Fourth row: Dana Zemtsov, Anastasia Kobekina, Boris Giltburg.

• The French violinist, Fanny Clamagirand, will play the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas cycle over the opening days (28 June-1 July) with pianist Roustem Saiykoulov. Other performers in the first half will be the popular Signum Quartet and the young all-women Nightingale Quartet from Copenhagen

• Signum will play Mozart and Schubert G major quartets and Brahms Clarinet Quintet with Matt Hunt, who joins them for the much postponed Roxanna Panufnik premiere. They will also play works from their ‘Bridging the Gap’ series to celebrate 30 years since the end of Apartheid

• Chiaroscuro Quartet will return to Bantry (1-4 July) with a traditional mix of Haydn (Op.33), Beethoven (Op.59) and the great Schubert Quintet with the young cellist star, Anastasia Kobekina

• The second half of the Festival will feature Schubert’s Winterreise with Julius Drake partnering the exciting mezzo, Fleur Barron (2 July)

• We will be joined by members of Pavel Haas Quartet with Boris Giltburg for the two of the Brahms Piano Quartets and the Ravel Trio (3-6 July)

• Dudok Quartet from Netherlands will play a rarely performed quintet by Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva with Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova. Dudok will also premiere a co-commission with the Amsterdam Quartet Biennale and the Borletto Buitoni Trust for the Lebanon/UK composer, Bushra el Turk (3 July). She will also adjudicate our Composition Competition and direct the Composition Workshop

• Esther Hoppe will join us from 4 July. She recently brought out a superb recording of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, she will play the B minor/E major Partitas and A minor/C major Sonatas. She has a longstanding duo with Alasdair Beatson, who will play Mozart and Fauré with her

• Alasdair will also partner Dudok in Grazyna Bacewicz 1 st Piano Quintet

• For the Baroque Peter Spissky will bring his Camerata Øresund to play three Coffee Concerts featuring in turn the Bach family, Vivaldi concertos and a Handel extravaganza with soprano Anna Devin

• Another Danish group, Ensemble MidtVest, will cover wind quintet repertoire

• We are initiating an Emerging Quartets space in the programme with Sonoro Quartet from Belgium with Seamus Hickey on viola. Their repertoire includes works by two women composers, one from Sri Lanka. On a more mainstream note they will partner three members of Ensemble MidtVest in a late-night performance of Schubert’s Octet (6 July) and join with Dudok Quartet to close the Festival with the Mendelssohn Octet