Leonard Elschenbroich / Alexei Grynyuk: Cello Series 1 – Brahms @ West Cork Chamber Music Festival 2021 – Bantry and Beyond
Brahms’ two Cello Sonatas are the undoubted highlights of the Romantic cello repertoire. The Adagio of the F major Sonata has to be one of the most affecting movements in the entire repertoire. This is Brahms at the height of his powers and he was composing for the best musicians in Europe. The E minor Sonata took him three years to write, which shows in its strangely proportioned three movement structure – a very large, passionate first movement, a dancing minuet-like Scherzo enfolding a delicious Trio glistening with a romantic hesitancy, concluding with a dramatic Bach-like fugal Finale. The Four Serious Songs was the last work he published, completed on his last birthday, a setting of three grim Biblical texts but concluding with St Paul’s words on love. We hear it here with cello replacing the bass.
All works performed by Leonard Elschenbroich Alexei Grynyuk
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West Cork Chamber Music Festival 2021: Bantry and Beyond (28 May–25 July)
West Cork Chamber Music Festival goes virtual. Although the circumstances for enjoying chamber music are different this year, the quality of the artists and the diversity and excellence of the programming are as high as ever.
The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is delighted to introduce its virtual incarnation, Bantry and Beyond. As the Festival musicians could not come to Bantry, the Festival has gone to the musicians. Festival-goers will become virtual travellers to destinations around Europe and USA. They will visit famous concert halls in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Chicago; historic Great Houses of Ireland and the Netherlands; a centuries old abbey with a fabulous library; Palaces in Prague and Vienna; old churches in London, Bantry and Amsterdam; a vaulted tunnel under a vanished convent in Cologne; studios in Amsterdam and Berlin; and Music Centres in Hungary and Italy.
The thirty Festival concerts will commence with four themed weekends starting in Vienna on 28 May before moving to daily concerts 25 June – 4 July followed by a coda of five concerts later in July. The concerts will be streamed by the platform OurConcerts.live. A PDF of the programme is available below.
Box office will open on 20th May 1pm and tickets can be bought here.
Audiences can buy a Festival Pass for all concerts, packages of 6 concerts, or single concerts.
All concerts will be available On Demand for 48 hours after broadcast. Visit the Box office link above to learn more.