Classical Music At Kilkenny Arts Festival

Various venues, Kilkenny, various dates, times, prices Aug 7-16 See listings for details 056-7752175 www.kilkennyarts.ie

When it comes to early music, Kilkenny has long had the best track record among large-scale Irish arts festivals, and a number of the concerts in this year’s programme can be expected to add to its lustre in this regard.

On Saturday Hervé Niquet’s French period instruments group, Le Concert Spirituel, perform a programme of 17th- and 18th-century French sacred music, featuring composers familiar (Marc-Antoine Charpentier, whose best-known piece is the Eurovision jingle) and unfamiliar (Henri Fremart, Pierre Hugard, Louis Le Prince, Sébastien de Brossard, Pierre Bouteiller). Later in the festival are appearances by the Irish Baroque Orchestra, playing Haydn and Mozart on Thursday (they’ll repeat the programme in Galway and Dublin), and Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers from His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts with the Ex Cathedra Consort Baroque Ensemble under Jeffrey Skidmore on Friday 14th.

There are also concerts by Serbian pianist Aleksandar Madzar (Friday 7th), guitarist Michael O’Toole (Saturday 8th), organist Eric Sweeney (Sunday 9th), the violin and piano duo of Priya Mitchell and Polina Leschenko (Tuesday 11th), the RTÉ Concert Orchestra (Saturday 15th), and the chamber ensemble, the Dresden Group (Saturday 15th and Sunday 17th).