Kilkenny Arts Festival

Various venues, Kilkenny Today and tomorrow kilkennyarts.ie056-7752175

KATHERINE BRODERICK (SOPRANO), UO/JEAN-LUC TINGAUD

Ulster Hall, Belfast Tonight 7.45pm Adm free 0044-3709011227

The closing concert of Kilkenny Arts Festival on Saturday sees a return of the popular Kilkenny Festival Choir, specially created for the festival and trained and conducted by Fergus Sheil. The choir performs two works by Beethoven, the rarely heard, short cantata Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) and the Mass in C (with soprano Róisín O’Grady, mezzo soprano Bridget Knowles, tenor James Edwards, and bass Graeme Danby). The programme also includes Berlioz’s song-cycle, Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights).

Tonight in Kilkenny, the Dutch baritone Maarten Koningsberger is partnered by Finghin Collins in another great song-cycle, Schubert’s Winterreise. Both concerts are at St Canice’s Cathedral.

By curious coincidence, Les nuits d’été features in Friday’s free BBC Invitation concert by the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast. Katherine Broderick is the soprano soloist under Jean-Luc Tingaud, and the programme also includes César Franck’s symphonic poem Les Éoildes (inspired by a poem by Leconte de Lisle), the Valse fantaisie by Glinka, and the symphonic interludes from Richard Strauss’s opera Intermezzo.