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The 2011 KBC Music in Great Irish Houses Festival was launched on March 23rd in the KBC Bank Headquarters on Sandwith Street by the new Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs, Jimmy Deenihan TD.

“The KBC Music in Great Irish Houses Festival brings some of the finest chamber music in the world to a wide audience in some of the most beautiful settings in the country. As a music festival it is unique not just for its promotion of historic venues on the island of Ireland but in how it offers performances by world-class artists from home and abroad in these fine houses.”

Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs, Jimmy Deenihan TD

Welcome to the 2011 KBC Music in Great Irish Houses Chamber Music Festival

Foreword
Music in Great Irish Houses has reached its 41st year – still a constant in Ireland’s cultural calendar in these ever-changing times. While we should now be positive about the future, it is reassuring to know that chamber music, the music of friends, will once again resound in some of the nation’s most historic buildings. So, the Festival is on the road again and this is thanks in no small measure to that other Festival constant – KBC Bank. Not only have they secured this year’s Festival but they have already nailed their colours to the mast for next year.

With the encouragement of its Board, the Festival continues to grow and evolve, thanks to the vision of Artistic Director, Ciara Higgins. We will of course, continue to present acclaimed international artists alongside their Irish counterparts, and we will be visiting some new venues as well as returning to a number of perennial favourites. The dramatic surrounds of Christ Church Cathedral, the Baroque Chapel of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham and the Chapel of Trinity College Dublin will feature this year, and we will be reacquainting ourselves with the Festival’s spiritual home Castletown House, as well as the Orangery in Killruddery House, the Freemason’s Hall in Molesworth Street and the more modern Sugar Club in Leeson Street. We will also be heading north of the border once again when we pay a return visit to Hillsborough Castle at the invitation of Secretary of State, Owen Paterson. 

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Artistic Director's Introduction
Last year was a very special one for the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses Festival. It reached the “grand old age” of 40, spread its wings further afield to the Centre Culturel Irlandais and Ambassade d’Irlande in Paris, and welcomed the three previous artistic directors to the traditional final night in the festival birthplace, Castletown House. If life begins at 40, we are certainly enjoying a great new “beginning”!

This year’s Festival is a season of firsts – venues, appearances and repeats of festival favourites.

La Serenissima, the award-winning period ensemble and champions of the music of Antonio Vivaldi, makes its Festival début in the magnificent setting of Christ Church Cathedral. In addition to Vivaldi’s much-loved “Four Seasons” masterpiece, Festival audiences can also look forward to the Irish première of the composer’s recently rediscovered “Grand Mogul” concerto with flautist Katy Bircher (June 17th). La Serenissima members Adrian Chandler, Gareth Deats and James Johnstone can be heard again in the Festival’s first morning concert in the serene setting of the Chapel of Trinity College Dublin (June 18th). Their programme includes two more unearthed Vivaldi scores alongside works by Vivaldi contemporaries Albinoni and Pisadel.

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