On the eve of our landmark anniversary year, I am delighted to present a Festival which I am sure will whet musical appetites for our big 4-0celebrations in 2010, and also underpins the pre-eminent position of Music in Great Irish Houses, after all these years.
A feast of quartet playing, an emphasis on that most sonorous of instruments, the cello, and the programming of many familiar faces from home and abroad are at the heart of this year’s Festival.
I am delighted to announce that the Belcea Quartet returns to the Festival’s birthplace Castletown House for an all-Schubert programme featuring two of his truly great works; “Death and the Maiden” Quartet and the magnificent Quintet for which these dynamic young musicians are joined by one of their mentors, Valentin Erben of the legendary Alban Berg Quartet.
The Festival will feature two concerts by the dazzling French quartet Quatuor Ebène, on their first visit to our shores. They will be joined by one of Ireland’s adopted musical sons Philippe Cassard for an enticing programme of music by Dvorák, Beethoven and Ravel in Dublin and Cork. Festival audiences who missed the brilliant performance by the Navarras in the 2007 Festival in Stormont have a treat in store as they make their ‘southern’ début with music by Haydn and Shostakovich. Topping that is their partnership with John O’Conor for Schumann’s magnificent Quintet in Killruddery.
Other great Irish artists and Festival favourites, former Artistic Director Hugh Tinney and clarinnetist John
Finucane play Brahms and then join forces with the exceptionally talented young mezzo-soprano Tara
Erraught, who since autumn 2008 is a member of the Opera Studio of the Bayerische Staatsoper.
We welcome German cellist extraordinaire Daniel Müller-Schott to the Festival for the first time, partnered
by Robert Kulek who will be remembered for his recital with Arabella Steinbacher in 2007. The Emo Court
concert includes some of the masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire including cello sonatas by
Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, and Schubert’s much-loved “Arpeggione”. Also making her Festival début
is the vibrant British cellist Natalie Clein collaborating with an artist much-loved by Irish audiences,
Chinese guitarist XueFei Yang. Their programme features evocative music by Piazzola, De Falla and Albéniz.
On the education front, this year we introduce “Support Act” offering some of Ireland’s most talented young chamber ensembles the opportunity to work with Festival artists, Philippe Cassard and Laura Samuel of the Belcea Quartet, ahead of their début performance at the National Gallery of Ireland during the Festival. Advice on the broader aspects of performance participation from an established artists’ manager during the course of the Festival is also part of this new mentoring programme for our young musicians.
I look forward to meeting many of you during the course of the Festival and really hope that you enjoy this very special Festival as much as I have enjoyed planning it!
CIARA HIGGINS, Artistic Director