Just before the summer, along with students and staff from Highbury Grove School, we were lucky enough visit the West Cork Chamber Music Festival 2014, held in various locations in Bantry in the west of Ireland.

We thought we’d share some of our pictures.

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It was a busy weekend, filled with a wide variety of challenging music, in a magical location. Here’s a summary of our itinerary;

Friday

We all woke up (very) early and travelled to  Stansted airport, flew to Cork and made our way to Bantry itself. The journey provided a great opportunity to get to know the Highbury Grove students who came on the trip too.

In the afternoon we went swimming and played pitch and putt at the hotel.

That evening , we went to the opening concert at Bantry House. There were string quartets from Janacek and Debussy, preludes from Abrahamsan and a Busoni violin sonata.

Saturday

We took a long walk along the cliffs at the Sheepshead Peninsula, returning for the evening concert (Mahler/Mendelssohn/Bartok).

Sunday

We watched young quartets as they took part in masterclasses, took a boat trip to Whiddy Island, saw a lunchtime concert from a young string quartet (Tippett; Amy Rooney; Brahms), an evening concert (Ravel/Enescu/Korngold)…phew!

Monday

On our last day, we went along to the Town Concert where we heard the Young European Strings Chamber Orchestra then, tired but musically satisfied, began the long trip back to Plaistow/Highbury late on Monday night…

You can find out more about this wonderful festival at their website http://www.westcorkmusic.ie/chambermusicfestival/programme.

(Ms. Hendy)