Playing with pals

THE Killaloe Festival was founded last year by the Limerick based Irish Chamber Orchestra and the four day programme, which runs at St Flannan's Cathedral from next Thursday through to the following Sunday, has something of a friends and family air about it.

The orchestra has struck up something of a special alliance with the Italian violinist Franco Gulli and viola player Bruno Giuranna, both of them distinguished soloists in their own right, and both also long term colleagues in the Italian String Trio. They both featured in the inaugural festival last year, and both are returning in 1997. Giuranna is the soloist in the opening concert, when he plays the Viola Concerto in D by Hoffmeister and also directs Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto and Mahler's string orchestra version of Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet.

For the closing concert on July 6th, Gulli is the soloist in Haydn's Violin Concerto in C and he is joined by the orchestra's leader, Fionnuala Hunt, in Bach's Double Concerto. Also in this programme are the eighth of the youthful Mendelssohn's string symphonies and Gerald Barry's witty La jalousie taciturne which the orchestra commissioned last year. Later in July, on Tuesday 15th, the orchestra will be repeating this programme at the Wigmore Hall in London.

Between the orchestral events are two chamber concerts. On Friday, Giuranna joins the Dublin Piano Trio (Fionnuala Hunt with her sister Una on piano and Aisling Drury Byrne on cello) for a repeat of the Trimble/Mendelssohn/Brahms programme they played at the AIB Music Festival in Great Irish Houses earlier this month. And on Saturday, the Hibernia String Trio of Brona Cahill, Joachim Roewer and Richard Jenkinson (all members of the ICO), play Lennox Berkeley, Beethoven, Kevin O'Connell and Dohnanyi.