Fri Aug 6-Sun Aug 15, 056-7752175 kilkennyarts.ie
UO/HOWARD SHELLEY, JOANN FALLETTA
Ulster Hall, Belfast Tonight 7.45pm, Tues 1.05pm Adm free 0044 3709011227
Kilkenny Arts Festival kicks off today with a recital by Finnish pianist Antti Siirala, winner of both the Dublin and Leeds piano competitions in 2003. Siirala will play Brahms (the Op 118 Piano Pieces), Schoenberg (the Op 11 Piano Pieces) and Chopin (the four Ballades).
The big concerts on each of the festival’s two weekends are choral. British early music specialists The Cardinall’s Musick (pictured) and their conductor, Andrew Carwood, focus on Tallis and Byrd tomorrow. And next weekend the specially assembled Kilkenny Festival Choir and Orchestra under Fergus Sheil perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Rossini’s Stabat Mater.
The opening weekend’svaried line-up also includes a lute recital by Thomas Dunford (on Sunday morning) and William Walton’s cheeky Façade, conducted by David Brophy, with Barry McGovern as the speaker of Edith Sitwell’s poems. Finghin Collins, who takes on the piano solo part in Choral Fantasy, can also be heard accompanying Dutch baritone Maarten Koningsberger in Schumann, Brahms, Duparc and Butterworth on Thursday.
In Belfast, the BBC’s free invitation concerts with the Ulster Orchestra continue to highlight works by women. There’s a symphony by a 19th-century Englishwoman tonight
(Alice Mary Smith’s Symphony in A minor of 1876, conducted by Howard Shelley), and two short pieces by Enniskillen’s Joan Trimble on Tuesday lunchtime (The Maid of Mullaghmore and The Boyne Water, conducted by JoAnn Falletta).
