Bantry festival was bursting at the seams

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is, you might say, bursting at the seams. It was extended this year to nine days and a typical day can include up to four concerts, three sets of master classes, and more in the fringe. The festival is broad in its musical taste. Living composers dominated the opening concert. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra's programme of MacMillan, Vasks, Part and Lutoslawski played to a packed St Brendan's Church. Hans-Kristian Sorensen's performance of Xenakis's Rebonds for percussion won a standing ovation. And the festival has been instrumental in the acquisition of a new harpsichord, funded by Cork County Council and the Arts Council, which will allow freer exploration of Bach and beyond.

The sheer scope of the festival's expansion has brought some problems in its train. The programme book was badly in need of an editor with a firm hand and a proof-reader with a sharp eye. And it was sad to see the midday Coffee Concerts following the knee-jerk regional festival route of exposure for young Irish performers. The young are already well catered for in the fringe programme at Bantry, and generally, as a group, they are disproportionately favoured in this country, although the encouragement dries up when they have to make a career without the attraction of being "young".

Does anybody really feel that pianist Peter Tuite or mezzo soprano Doreen Curran (featured in this year's Coffee Concerts) are more worthy of a solo recital than their seniors, the likes of, say, harpist Andreja Malir, clarinettist John Finucane or harpsichordist David Adams, who were called upon only to play in isolated works?

Bantry sets itself the highest standards, so it's by those standards it will be judged. They were well in evidence in the final day's offerings. The Callino String Quartet, the young group which won so many hearts last year, were back. They played Haydn, early Webern and Janacek, and with a newly-acquired professional sheen, though with only fitful evidence of the artless lyrical directness which made such an impression 12 months ago. Two new quartets emerged from the master classes, the first presenting themselves in the treacherous territory of Mozart, the second (led by David O'Doherty, with Michele Fleming, John McCarthy and Jonathan Byers) showing a much more intuitive and imaginative grasp of the issues in early Beethoven. The young trio of Cora Venus Lunny (violin), Hanno Strydom (cello) and David McNulty (piano) took the starry approach to Shostakovich's E minor Piano Trio, giving so much attention to display that the music itself rather got lost in the process.

But, if you wanted display-oriented playing that was musically focused, you couldn't have asked for anything better than the closing performance of the Piano Quintet by the Polish-born Russian, Moisei Vainberg (19191996). Vainberg, long seen as a satellite of Shostakovich, has recently begun to emerge as an important figure in his own right. The five-movement quintet is so full of surprises it's like an exotic plant that bolts again and again, in unexpected ways. Aleksandar Madzar and the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet played it, unforgettably, like men possessed.