Francis Humphrys, director of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, is showing what you might call an abundance of out-of-hours enterprise this year. He's following up his Easter week Shostakovich quartet cycle and July Bach weekend, with another weekend featuring two leading French performers of the younger generation. Cellist Anne Gastinel (right) is already familiar to audiences in West Cork (she appeared at the 1998 festival) and pianist Francois-Frederic Guy has played in Dublin, most recently in June.
They're each giving a solo recital (Gastinel on Friday, Guy on Saturday) before joining up as a duo on Sunday. The common thread is that each programme includes a work by the French composer Eric Tanguy.
Gastinel frames his Trois Esquisses with Bloch, Hindemith, Reger and Cassado. The Piano Sonata (written for and premiered by Guy) will be heard in the context of Brahms, Beethoven and Shostakovich. And the duo will offer his Nocturne in the surroundings of Debussy, Janacek, Liszt and Franck.
