KBC Music In Great Irish Houses

Various venues all over Ireland Jun 7-13 01-6642822

The Quatuor Ebène, one of the most widely-acclaimed string quartets ever to emerge from France, make their Irish début at the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival this week. The quartet join forces with pianist Philippe Cassard for concerts in Dublin (National Gallery) and Cork (Fota House) on Wednesday and Thursday, when the musical fare will include a string quartet (by Ravel), a piano quartet (Beethoven’s Op. 16) and a piano quintet (Dvorak’s Op. 81).

The festival’s other visiting string quartets are both also involved in quintets. The Navarra Quartet is joined by John O’Conor in the Schumann Piano Quintet (at Killruddery House, Bray, on Tuesday) and the Belcea Quartet will play Schubert’s String Quintet with cellist Valentin Erben (Castletown House, Celbridge, on Saturday 13th).

The festival opens in Emo Court, Co Laois on Sunday with a programme of Shostakovich, Schubert and Mendelssohn from the cello and piano duo of Daniel Müller-Schott and Robert Kulek, and there’s an all-Irish line-up at Killruddery on Monday, when mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, clarinettist John Finucane and pianist Hugh Tinney perform Schubert, Brahms and Spohr.

The most unusual of this year’s line-ups is at Beaulieu House, Co Louth, on Friday 12th, when Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang teams up with English cellist Natalie Clein. And Clein is also involved in a concert that’s been added to the originally advertised programme, with accordionist Dermot Dunne at the Freemason’s Hall, Molesworth Street, Dublin, on Thursday.