The International Music Festival at Killaloe, Co Clare, brainchild of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, is now in its third year. Running over a long weekend, Thursday to Sunday, the festival is topped and tailed by the ICO itself, sandwiching in between concerts by soloists at either ends of their performing careers.
Max Levinson, winner of last year's Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, repeats on Friday some of the repertoire that helped win him the competition (Brahms's Variations on an original theme, the Liszt Sonata in B minor), and plays some music that features on his first CD, Schoenberg's Six Little Pieces, Op. 19; also on his programme is Bartok's Dance Suite.
Veteran American violinist Ruggiero Ricci, who will be 80 later this month (with more than 6,000 concerts in 65 countries already under his belt), plays an unaccompanied programme that suggests an appetite for performing undiminished by age. Long one of the most spectacular of fiddlers, next Saturday he offers a Bach sonata (No 1 in G minor) and partita (No 2 in D minor, with the famous Chaconne), Prokofiev's Solo Sonata, the third of Ysaye's set of solo sonatas, Wieniawski's Le staccato and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst's Variations on The Last Rose of Summer. For the opening concert, the ICO is joined by the cor anglais player of the New York Philharmonic, Thomas Stacy, hailed by the New York Times as the Heifetz of the cor anglais. He will be heard in works by Telemann and Gordon Jacob. The orchestra, playing under its leader and artistic director, Fionnuala Hunt, opens the evening with a string serenade from Sweden (by Dag Wiren) and ends with one from Russia (by Tchaikovsky).
The closing concert, conducted by Proinnsias O Duinn, is planned as an openair event on Lough Derg, with appropriate music by Handel, the first of the Water Music suites and the Royal Fireworks Music. If the weather turns inclement, this concert will be given indoors in St Flannan's Cathedral, the venue for all other festival events.
The International Music Festival runs at Killaloe, Co Clare, July 9th-12th.
