By Rose Rushe
2014 is the second only Killaloe Chamber Music Festival, opening this Friday 13 at 8pm and running with concerts, afternoon and evening slots, into Sunday 15.St Flannan’s Cathedral packed out last year with support for this locally run, not-for-profit event that commands world class talent. This year’s line up includes viola player Joachim Rower as artistic director, soprano Linda Lee, violinists Katherine Hunka and Diane Daly and pianist Hugh Tinney. Not bad.
The opening concert comprises music by Mozart, Schnitte (‘Moz Art for two violins’) and Chausson.
Roewer explains that each piece of music for 2014 “bears a dedication, to a friend, to a teacher, to an idol”. The stories to these relationships reveal a more human dimension that “will without doubt, greatly enhance our experience of this music”.
Festival founder John Horgan takes up the point: Sunday June 15’s (3pm) ‘A Musical Offering’ was by JS Bach to Fredrick 11, King of Prussia. Bach had visited him at Potsdam and was asked to improvise on a piece of music written by the King. Bach incidentally wrote this and ‘A Musical Offering’ is one of the great masterpieces in Chamber music”.
On Saturday June 14, 8pm, the String Quartet by Ravel was Ravel’s submission to the Prix de Rome and the Conservatoire de Paris but rejected after its 1904 premier. The public rallied.
“In 1905, Claude Debussy wrote to Ravel, saying ‘In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet’,” Horgan reveals. “Ravel’s string Quartet in F major now stands as one of the most widely performed chamber music works in the classical repertoire”.
Full programme on www.killaloemusicfestival.com and online www.uch.ie, the concert hall’s box office.
