Máire Carroll in the Kirkoskammer series: this week’s classical highlights

Also, Two-day festival in the Oriel from Louth Contemporary Music Society

Máire Carroll
Máire Carroll

THURSDAY 21st

Kirkoskammer – The Piano Bewley's Café Theatre, Grafton Street, Dublin, 7pm, €10/€7, kirkoskammerpiano.eventbrite.ie

The latest concert in Kirkos Ensemble's Kirkoskammer series in the recently refurbished Bewley's Café Theatre focuses on the piano. Máire Carroll includes two pieces by Salvatore Sciarrino (Anamorfosi and De la nuit) which are like modern-day musical equivalents of Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations. It's Ravel that Sciarrino sets up with unexpected partners and Carroll conveniently includes Jeux d'eau and Ondine, two pieces by Ravel that fuel Sciarrino's fantasies. Also on offer is a connected pairing of Garrett Sholdice's Tanka for Aki Takahashi and the slow movement of Schubert's late Piano Sonata in B flat. And the evening ends with Morton Feldman's Palais de Mari which was recorded more than 20 years ago by none other than Aki Takahashi.

FRIDAY 22nd

The Book of Hours Oriel Centre, Dundalk Gaol, 8pm, €10; and in various Dundalk venues, Saturday 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm (all free), 8pm, €10 louthcms.org

Eamonn Quinn's Louth Contemporary Music Society is presenting a two-day festival of "beautiful, profound music by contemporary composers from across the globe". There are some classics, Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet and Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater, both in the closing concert. The Pärt will be performed in just intonation, and acoustically pure tuning will feature also in Wolfgang Schweinitz's KLANG auf Schön Berg La Monte Young. New pieces by Karen Tanaka, Linda Buckley, Michel Pisaro, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Pesson and Galina Grigorjeva are liberally spread throughout the two days. The performers include Gothic Voices, the Goeyvaerts Trio, Carol Robinson, Juliet Fraser, Helen Bledsoe, Séverine Ballon, Matteo Cesari, Pascale Berthelot and musicians from Music Generation Louth. And the composers Tanaka, Pisaro, Saunders, Grigorjeva and Bryars will be present.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor