WCCMF 2023 Final Programme
WCCMF 2023 Final Programme
WCCMF 2023 Final Programme
Ireland’s biggest and most prestigious chamber music festival is back in style for its 26 th incarnation
with six concerts a day and a multitude of masterclasses. Headlined by four outstanding violinists, Alina
Ibragimova, Viviane Hagner, Nurit Stark and young Mairéad Hickey, they are complemented by four
international string quartets, Pacifica, Armida, Ardeo and Ragazze plus the exciting young Trio
Gaspard. The Baroque and early music ensembles also feature two outstanding violinists, Ariadne
Daskalakis and Johannes Pramsohler.
Thematically the great Bach and Mozart will run as threads throughout the Festival, while Ibragimova
and Cédric Tiberghien will be exploring Schumann, in particular the late works. Mozart will come in
many guises but especially the string quartets including the Six for Papa Haydn. Bach will be presented
in many forms, the sonatas for violin and harpsichord, the Goldberg Variations in a new arrangement
for string quartet, solo sonatas for both violin and lute and the wonderful gamba sonatas. Another
theme will be a series of musical portraits of famous women using their own words mostly from letters,
both sent and unsent, diaries, a will, a poem and speeches from the dock.
There will be world premieres from Donnacha Dennehy and Sally Beamish, three new works from our
Composition Competition and a flurry of European and Irish premieres. A selection from Kronos
Quartet’s Fifty for the Future will be exciting as will a rare performance of George Crumb’s Black Angels
that dates back to the Vietnam War. There will be six young quartets at the Festival, receiving
masterclasses and giving performances both in the main programme and in Fringe concerts all around
West Cork. For them it will be an intense experience of both the beauties and the pressures of chamber
music at the highest level.
FRIDAY 23 JUNE
Grażyna Bacewicz’ Sonata da camera is a strange piece composed in Warsaw in 1945 in the
immediate aftermath of a terrible War, reflecting both the release of battlefield tension and the
rediscovery of joy amidst a city of ruins. Its gentle charm is in sharp contrast to the ferocious energy of
Schumann’s Second Sonata, whose relentless pace dominates almost unforgivingly but for the
miraculous slow movement where, for an all-too-brief moment, the fury subsides. The Pacifica Quartet’s
much postponed return to Bantry begins with the European Premiere of Sean Shepherd’s Third
Quartet, written for the Pacifica and premiered by them last September. We close our Opening Concert
with the famous Dissonance Quartet, one of Mozart’s series of Six for Papa Haydn.
SATURDAY 24 JUNE
This first Saturday sees the start of our series of quartet masterclasses and early performances by two
young Quartets on the verge of a professional career, one includes the second of Mozart’s Six for Papa
Haydn. The day itself opens with Mozart’s best-known piano sonata and Beethoven’s most stunning set
of variations. The riveting Goldberg Variations exist in many disguises, this quartet version is a new
one. Ibragimova and Tiberghien continue their Schumann exploration culminating with the strange and
rarely played Third Sonata, composed a few months before his final mental breakdown. In contrast
Beethoven’s great, late A minor Quartet was written to celebrate his recovery from illness. Late Night
Nurit Stark brings us the Gypsy inspired Sonata by Sandor Veress, a student of his fellow-Hungarian,
Béla Bartók, whose Bach inspired Solo Sonata follows, composed in exile in tempore belli.
SUNDAY 25 JUNE
Johann Sebastian Bach weaves his magical path through this year’s Festival. Johannes Pramsohler
and Philippe Grisvard bring us a generous selection of his ground-breaking sonatas for violin and
harpsichord. Donnacha Dennehy will share his composing skills with the three winners of the Festival’s
Composition Competition. Cédric Tiberghien continues his exposition of the art of variations with sets
by Beethoven and Schumann paired with George Benjamin’s Shadowlines. The evening concert brings
back Mozart, an early violin sonata and the scintillating G major Quartet from his Six for Papa Haydn
that ends with the glorious marriage of fugue and opera buffe, brought to us by the flamboyant Ragazze
Quartet from Amsterdam. Ibragimova and Tiberghien are joined by Leonard Elschenbroich for
Schumann’s last Piano Trio, the concert ending with his Geistervariationen, his last surviving keyboard
work, a set of variations on an angelic melody Schumann ascribed to the spirit of Schubert.
Candle-lit Beethoven from the Ardeo Quartet grace the late-night stage, concluding with an electrifying,
high tension Finale, not exactly bed-time music, but the night will still be young.
MONDAY 26 JUNE
Johannes Pramsohler is renowned as a champion unearther of forgotten treasures of the Baroque,
some to be heard in Ensemble Diderot’s programme from mid-eighteenth century Berlin where
composer-violinist Johann Gottlieb Graun was concertmaster. Some years ago the hugely successful
Kronos Quartet commissioned a series of new compositions called Fifty for the Future. The ever-
adventurous Ragazze Quartet play five of them in the Midday Concert. The young Inis Quartet have
chosen Ravel and another of Mozart’s Six for Papa Haydn. Cédric Pescia returns to Bantry with a
selection of Bach’s immortal French Suites. The evening begins with Pacifica presenting a new quartet
from Donnacha Dennehy followed by one of Shostakovich’s explosive War Quartets. One of the
happier arrangements of orchestral works for chamber performance is the sextet version of Mozart’s
gorgeous Sinfonia Concertante with Ibragimova and Emma Werning as soloists. Late Night Ardeo
Quartet will play Beethoven’s last Quartet with its famous finale debate on the question ‘Must it be’.
TUESDAY 27 JUNE
Ariadne Daskalakis and her Köln Ensemble will play the Biber Mystery Sonatas with specially
commissioned poems by Ruth Padel to be read in the re-tuning pauses. Famously Biber specified that
each sonata must be played in a different tuning. The Joyful Sonatas take us from the Annunciation to
the Finding in the Temple. Late Night the Five Sorrowful Mysteries take the Biblical story from the
Garden of Gethsemane to the Crucifixion. The Midday Crespo Concert introduces three unfamiliar
women including Emilie Mayer, known in her lifetime as the female Beethoven. The Afternoon Crespo
Concert introduces the Armida Quartet, who have embarked on a workshop exploration of all Mozart’s
string quartets using both the manuscripts and early editions. Here they play his very first quartet,
composed at a wayside inn on the fourteen-year-old prodigy’s Italian tour and the D minor Quartet from
his Six for Papa Haydn. Pacifica’s final concert celebrates the life of the American composer Ben
Johnston with his one-movement quartet based on the famous hymn Amazing Grace alongside
Dvořák’s folk-inspired melodies.
WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE
Café Zimmermann was a famous coffee-house in Leipzig where Bach’s weekly Collegium Musicum
concerts took place. This Coffee Concert features the great triumvirate of Bach, Handel and Telemann.
Bach’s D major Harpsichord Concerto is a re-working of the famous E major Violin Concerto. Anna
Devin joins Ensemble Diderot for Handel’s cantata Armida abbandonata. In a Bach inspired morning
the Midday Crespo concert features all three of his famous Gamba Sonatas. Trio Gaspard make their
Bantry debut with a World Premiere by Sally Beamish, two Haydn Trios and Smetana’s dramatic life
story. Armida Quartet tell the tale of the aging Janáček’s obsession with a woman decades younger
than him, told in the form of passionate, musical letters. Brett Dean’s new work written for the Armida
and his daughter, Lotte, draws on letters written by Mary Queen of Scots to her cousin, Elizabeth I and
adapted by Matthew Jocelyn. Ardeo Quartet’s dramatic Finale pairs Schubert 13th Quartet with George
Crumb’s 13 Tales from the Dark Land known as Black Angels, composed as a response to the Vietnam
War, in tempore belli.
THURSDAY 29 JUNE
The day opens with the last five Mystery Sonatas, meditations on events in the life of Mary where
Biber’s inspiration rises to ecstatic heights. The Midday Crespo brings recent works by the ever-popular
Caroline Shaw before Emma Wernig joins the Ragazze for Mozart’s best-known string quintet. Mairéad
Hickey and Jérémie Moreau will play Fauré’s passionate First Sonata, a love letter to Marianne Viardot,
and Grieg’s joyful Second Sonata composed on his honeymoon. In grosser Sehnsucht is the second of
three works in our series of musical portraits of famous women in their own words, the sculptor Camille
Claudel, the artist Frida Kahlo, Queen Cristina of Sweden and the two revolutionaries, Rosa
Luxembourg and Louise Michel. Nurit Stark leads a brilliant ensemble for Fauré’s exquisite piano
quartet, renowned not only for its unmatched beauty but its recall of a peal of bells he used to hear in
childhood drifting over the fields when ever the wind blew from the West. Unusually the day closes in a
blaze of Baroque concertos.
FRIDAY 30 JUNE
Ensemble Diderot remains in concerto and cantata mode for their final Coffee Concert, emulating the
Berlin Friday Academies, where virtuoso instrumentalists composed for their own instrument. Mára’s
Cello Concerto has two exuberant outer movements to show off the soloist’s skills. The Greek violinist,
Jonian Kadesha, has chosen the title of one of Kurtág’s miniatures for his solo recital that concludes
inevitably with the D minor Partita that challenges every modern virtuoso violinist. Ariadne Daskalakis’
recital is a who’s who of early 18th century composers, concluding with this Festival’s only appearance
of Antonio Vivaldi. Viviane Hagner returns to Bantry to perform in two well-known Romantic piano trios
and later Nurit Stark and Cédric Pescia play Enescu’s Violin Sonata dans le caractère populaire
roumain. a work that changes the possibilities of the medium forever. Late Night Jonian Kadesha
returns with Vashti Hunter, also from Trio Gaspard, to play two unusual Greek Duos before concluding
with Ravel’s Duo masterpiece.
SATURDAY 1 JULY
Irish performers Anna Devin and Deirdre Brenner come together for a morning recital. Johannes
Pramsohler and lutenist Jadran Duncumb come back to Bach and his contemporaries for an unusual
and intimate recital. Viviane Hagner and Lilit Gregorian’s Bantry House recital introduces us to a
spectacular sonata by the unfamiliar Armenian composer Arno Babajanian, a work that is by turns
harsh, romantic, strident and lyrical. The evening begins with two Ukrainian composers, a short Elegy
by Lysenko and a set of Five Pieces by the great Ukrainian master, Valentin Silvestrov. Trio Gaspard
bring us Dvořák’s all-time favourite Dumky Trio, outrageously self-indulgent but a pure pleasure. Our
third musical portrait of famous women in their own words turns to the tragic tale of Camille Claudel,
brilliant sculptor, lover of Rodin and locked up for 20 years in an asylum by her family. Late Night
Caroline Melzer returns to Mahler des Knaben Wunderhorn, magical folk stories where songs arrive on
the wings of geese, dead soldiers answer the roll-call, nightingales sing to lovers and the trumpet
forever sounds the call to a soldier’s death.
SUNDAY 2 JULY
Armida Quartet treat us to two of Mozart’s delicious early quartets before playing the last in our series
of Six for Papa Haydn; this E flat quartet is one of the most revealing of Mozart’s mercurial
temperament with austere meditation intimately mingled with cheerful optimism. There have been six
quartets, some newly formed, some on the verge of a professional career, receiving masterclasses
during the Festival. In the Young Musicians Platform each ensemble gets a chance to showcase their
skills. The Finale opens with the unusual pairing of violin and viola that Mozart wrote to help out a fellow
composer who was about to miss a commission deadline. Think of it as a Sinfonia Concertante without
the orchestra. Next up is Beethoven’s last and greatest violin sonata with its gentle air of tranquil
beauty, the complete opposite of its flamboyant predecessor, the Kreutzer. As is our custom the
Festival closes with one of the great string sextets after the stage is cleared with the Steinway concert
grand’s dramatic exit down the Bantry House garden steps.