West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Project Partner:
West Cork Music

Date: 25 June – 3 July 2005
Venue: Bantry House & St. Brendan’s Church, Bantry

Project Description:
The internationally renowned West Cork Chamber Music Festival, one of the most prestigious features of the Irish classical music calendar, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2005 with a world-class line-up of musical talent. Taking place in the glorious setting of Bantry House, on the beautiful shores of Bantry Bay in Tenor, Ian Bostridge the heart of West Cork, the Festival brought together music from twenty nations played by musicians from a dozen countries.

To celebrate Cork 2005, the West Cork Chamber Music Festival invited a number of top artists to perform in a spectacular mid-week concert in St. Brendan's Church. Britten's ‘Canticles’ are five miraculous settings of texts ranging from Solomon's erotic Song of Songs, through a Chester miracle play adaptation of the terrible story of Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac to poems by Sitwell and Eliot. The singers were led by the star tenor Ian Bostridge. This rare performance of the complete Canticles was followed by the chamber adaptation for 14 instruments of Mahler's ‘Das Lied von der Erde’.