West Cork Chamber Music Festival
Bantry, Co. Cork
Fri 27 Jun 2025 - Sun 06 Jul 2025
The 30th West Cork Chamber Music Festival features a spectacular programme, as eclectic as usual, presenting much-loved favourites alongside world, and Irish, premieres. This 30th Festival, which takes place from June 27th to July 6th, will see many old favourites return to Bantry and, as usual, the Festival will feature many young and emerging performers. A number of loyal music-lovers have been travelling to Bantry since the very first festival in 1996, which had 13 concerts and 3 masterclasses over a week. Now 10 days in length, with close to 60 concerts, 30 masterclasses, fringe events, Ireland’s only Instrument Exhibition & Pubic Artist Talks, the West Cork Chamber Music Festival is a key date in the European classical music calendar.
Family features throughout this year’s Festival with a number of siblings, married couples and parents and their children sharing the stage. Celebrating the Festival’s 30th anniversary, the two brothers and two sisters of the Tchalik Quartet fittingly perform the World Premiere of Sam Perkin’s Celebration Quartet in the opening concert in Bantry House on Friday 27th June at
8pm. From a Russian French family, the siblings are making their Bantry debut and will be performing throughout the week.
Australian mezzo soprano, Lotte Betts Dean, returns to the Festival and joins her father, the viola player and composer, Brett Dean, for a special recital on Monday 30th June at 4pm in St Brendan’s Church. Their programme will feature music by Vaughan Williams, Sally Beamish, Hindemith, Stuart MacRae, Brett Dean and others.
Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud, no stranger to the Festival, will be accompanied by his three children, Alma, Franz and Hector, for a special family concert in St Brendan’s Church on Thursday 3rd July at 2pm. They will perform a programme of music by Handel, Mendelssohn, Brahms, a piece by Henning himself, and more.
On Thursday, July 3rd, Internationally renowned Irish pianist, Barry Douglas and star violinist Mairéad Hickey, will perform Brahms Violin Sonata No.1 in G major Op.78 and Violin Sonata No.2 in A major Op.100
Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon joins forces with her husband, the pianist Ryan McCullough for the Irish Premiere of Katherine Balch’s estrangement in the main evening concert on Friday 4th July in St Brendan’s Church.
The 30th West Cork Chamber Music Festival is an unmissable event packed with national and international stars.
