ConTempo Quartet does Beethoven: this week’s classical highlights

Also: Kaleidoscope’s last in series; Fionnuala Moynihan surveys Schubert in Triskel, Cork

ConTempo Quartet
ConTempo Quartet

ConTempo String Quartet
St Nicholas Collegiate Church, Galway Tuesday June 5th 1.10pm Adm free thegalwaymusicresidency.ie

The members of Galway's ConTempo Quartet are in action twice this week. There's the final lunchtime instalment of their Beethoven cycle, bringing the late Quartet in E flat, Op 127 to listeners in St Nicholas Collegiate Church. And on Thursday their Music & Musings series at the Black Gate Cultural Centre interleaves Debussy's Quartet in G minor and Deirdre McKay's Snowline with conversations between McKay and the players, chaired by the Contemporary Music Centre's Linda O'Shea Farren.

Kaleidoscope
Bello Bar, Portobello Harbour, Dublin Wednesday June 6th 8.30pm €15 kaleidoscopenight.com

The last programme in the current Kaleidoscope offers music by Schumann (his String Quartet in A minor from the Esposito Quartet); Alessandro Marcello (the Oboe Concerto in D minor with RTÉCO oboist Suzie Thorn joining the Espositos); Claude Bolling (the Suite for violin and jazz trio from Mia Cooper, Viv McLean, Dan Bodwell and Guy Rickarby); and a selection of pieces "from Southern Italy to the American South" (performed by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi).

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Fionnuala Moynihan 
Triskel Christchurch, Cork Friday June 8th 8pm €15/€12/€10 triskelartscentre.ie

The Unfinished Symphony is just one of many unfinished pieces in the legacy of the great Viennese composer Schubert. And approaches to his piano sonatas range from completing unfinished works to aggregating movements into new combinations and, at the other end, playing pieces exactly as Schubert left them, and stopping, as it were, in mid-air. Cork pianist Fionnuala Moynihan is in the middle of a Schubert survey that focuses solely on completed works. The three pieces in her latest programme are the sonatas in B, D575, in A, D959, and in B flat, D959.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor