FÁILTE
We are delighted to launch your 12th annual Chamber Music on Valentia Festival. Going from strength to strength, we have curated a rich and diverse programme of concerts, music workshops, immersive experiences, and participatory events that celebrate music from all over the world. There’s something for everyone, and we can’t wait to welcome you to the island.
With guest artists from the USA, Taiwan, the UK, and Ireland, this year’s festival features eight concerts over four days, plus the much-loved ‘Musical Map’ on the afternoon of Saturday, 16th August
Our opening concert on Thursday, 14th August, is specially curated around ‘The Kerry Polka and More’, combining string quartets from Bohemia and Scandinavia with sets by acclaimed Irish musicians Jack Talty (concertina) and Ultan O’Brien (fiddle) The String Extravaganza Finale on Sunday, 17th August, will be a joyful celebration of Vivaldi concerti and other musical gems We’re also thrilled to feature Kerry natives Gavan Ring (tenor) and Cormac Henry (flute), who join us this year. With a focus on music from Asia, we welcome Chia-Yin Hung on the pipa and guqin
Core to the programme are masterpieces of the chamber repertoire, including a Brahms String Quintet, Mendelssohn Piano Trio, Mozart Flute Quartet, and much more Our atmospheric late-night concerts include ‘Silk and Strings’ on August 14th and the meditative works of Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt on August 16 . We are honoured to welcome the following artists: Darragh Morgan (violin), Charles Spruill (violin), Jane Atkins (viola), Andreea Banciu (viola), Peter Adams (cello), Adrian Mantu (cello), Gavan Ring (tenor), Cormac Henry (flute), Chia-Yin Hung (pipa/guqin), Jack Talty (concertina), and Ultan O’Brien (fiddle). th
This year’s featured Irish composer is Siobhán Cleary, and as always, we proudly support Young Artists and encourage community engagement through our festival programme All of this takes place across a variety of unique venues on beautiful Valentia Island. We look forward to welcoming you this August for our 12th Festival. As ever a huge thank you to our supporters, venues, volunteers and audience in making this Festival exist in such a magical place.
Mary Dullea Artistic Director
THE KERRY POLKA AND MORE
WEDNESDAY, 14 AUGUST 2025 | 7.30pm at Church of St. John the Baptist, Knightstown with Jack Talty, concertina, Ultan O’Brien, fiddle/viola, Darragh Morgan, violin, Chase Spruill, violin, Jane Atkins, viola & Peter Adams, cello
EVENT PROGRAMME
Trad. (arr. Neil Martin): Alisdrum’s March, Sliabh Luachra Polkas, Reel Beatrice
Glazunov/Liadov/Sokolov: Polka in D major, Les Vendredis Harry O’Connor: ‘Evening Landscape, 2147 BCE’ (World Premiere performance)
Set of tunes by Ultan O’Brien and Jack Talty (introduced from the stage)
INTERVAL
Set of tunes by Ultan O’Brien and Jack Talty (introduced from the stage)
Aoife King: Brief Passings (World Premiere)
Bedřich Smetana: String Quartet No. 1, 2nd mvt ‘Allegro moderato de Polka’
Selection from Wood Works (Trad. Norwegian; arr. Danish String Quartet)
Peat Dance; Waltz after Lasse in Lyby; Ribers No. 8 (‘Sterrands Rand’); Sønderho Bridal Triology – Part II Brudestykke
PROGRAMME NOTES
Tonight’s opening concert programme has been devised to explore dance tunes, taking the starting point of the polka. We have put together music from Bohemia, Scandinavia, Russia and Ireland. We are grateful to Marie-Claire Stacey for her support of the two new works that have been commissioned from Kerry composers Aoife King and Harry O’Connor, who have reflected on the tune we know as the ‘Kerry Polka’.
Trad. (arr. Neil Martin): Alisdrum’sMarch,SliabhLuachraPolkas,Reel Beatrice
Belfast-born Neil Martin is a composer and musician with an international reputation who enjoys a most varied and rewarding career. Among orchestral and choral commissions are ‘Further Shore’ (2012) – an orchestral and choral setting of part of Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Cure at Troy’, for Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland; an a cappella setting of the ‘Agnus Dei’ (2010), premiered at Ground Zero, NYC, and ‘no tongue can tell’ (2004), a concerto for uilleann pipes, written for and performed by Liam O’Flynn that opened the Belfast Festival at Queen’s.
Composition for television, film and radio includes the award-winning movie ‘Hell’s Pavement’ (2009), many short dramas, television series and documentaries for BBC, C4 and RTÉ. Neil has composed and directed music extensively for theatre, including productions in the West End and New York, and has been collaborating with Stephen Rea and Field Day Theatre Company since 1988.
A cellist and an uilleann piper, he has worked with many leading musicians, both on stage and in the studio - these include Liam O'Flynn, Bryn Terfel, Barry Douglas, LSO, RPO, all the principal orchestras in Ireland, Christy Moore, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, The Dubliners, The Chieftains, Altan, Shaun Davey, Mary Black and Donal Lunny. In 2014, the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, invited Neil to perform, arrange and conduct music for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall to mark his historic state visit.
Neil also composes and performs in the award-winning West Ocean String Quartet, whose four albums have all been played on the International Space Station. Their fourth album, An Indigo Sky, was voted ‘CD of the Year’ by the Irish Times. We are grateful to Neil for the opportunity to perform this set of tunes this evening, including the particular resonance of polkas from Sliabh Luachra in this programme.
Glazunov/Liadov/Sokolo: LesVendredisPolka
Mitrofan Belaiev was a lumber millionaire as well as amateur violist and chamber music enthusiast. He held Friday evening gatherings of amateurs with a passion for playing string quartets that were to become the social centre of musical life in St. Petersburg. Belaiev also devoted much time, energy and money in publishing music by Russian composers. This led to regular visits by the most established Russian composers and over time they would bring a piece for string quartet as a token of appreciation for the help and support Belaiev had offered.
On these Friday evenings, the members of the Belaiev Quartet would assemble, followed by guests and visitors and play some Haydn or Beethoven perhaps, something a little newer or lesser-known, a Russian work and then, a new work that was still wet ink on the page! The players sight read these pieces. This evening’s work was a collaboration between Glazunov, Liadov and Sokolov, another promising student of Rimsky-Korsakov. “What shall we call it then?” asked Belaiev to which the answer was “Les Vendredis Polka, we dedicate it to you Mitrofan Petrovich!”
Harry O’Connor: EveningLandscape,2147BCE(World Premiere)
‘Evening Landscape, 2147 BCE’ is a concept piece combining archaeomusicological findings and ‘New Age’/meditation music aesthetics. “In 2003 a set of six wooden pipes were recovered in an archaeological dig at Charlesland, Co. Wicklow. Carbon dating established their age at 4,150 years old. Subsequently, professional fipples were designed by low whistle maker Ian Lambe. He used 3D printing to make six new fipples. They were fitted to the pipes by uilleann pipe maker Eugene Lambe. The results were astounding. These pipes which were made in Ireland over 4,000 years ago were playing a modern scale from G to E. What makes this most exciting and ground-breaking is that until now the accepted theory of the origin of European music is of Pythagoras writing down the mathematics of our modern scale circa 500 BC.
Yet here is an Irish instrument with a similar scale some 1,700 years earlier.” The significance of this discovery was recently demonstrated in practice by prehistoric music specialist Simon O’Dwyer, when he performed on a reconstruction of these pipes the well-known Irish traditional tune, the Kerry Polka, on Creedon’s Musical Atlas of Ireland broadcast on RTÉ One.
In my approach to writing this piece for concertina, fiddle and string quartet, I opted to organise this group differently than perhaps the more obvious formation, which would be the string quartet supporting the concertina and fiddle. Instead, I chose to split the group down the middle and divide the players into two trios: • Group 1: Violin (2), Viola (2), Fiddle/viola (1)‘Hexachord group’ • Group 2: Violin (1), Concertina, ‘Cello - ‘Soloists group’
Group 1, throughout the piece, will provide an ambient, drone-like texture, the tonal components of which are entirely and strictly derived from the 4,000-yearold scale. Group 1 operate within a defined set of musical parameters, with each instrument’s capability being reduced / (expanded?) to in effect having 2-3 notes at its disposal. The music of Group 1 is a gently undulating, lilting backdrop, with a tonal structure dating back over four millennia.
Group 2 then constitutes a trio of ‘soloists’. The Violin 1 part features decorative birdsong impressions, perhaps suggestive of an ancient landscape. The ‘Cello and Concertina together invoke a sombre song-like texture. The overall sound of the ensemble embodies a format typical of New Age and meditation music since the 1970’s; melody, drone or ‘pads’ accompaniment, and fixed media in the form of field recordings, such as of birdsong. This music for me is visually suggestive of landscape, both through its derivation from a musical technology literally pulled out of the ground, and through the naturalistic suggestion of its gentle ambient sound. Stylistically, this music may be described by any of the following terms: meditative, eco-music, archaeological, anthropological, ‘New Age’, ambient, environmental. Picture wild grasses, trees in full leaf and bodies of clear, unpolluted water, as defined the landscape of this island 4,000 years ago.
Aoife King: Brief Passings (World Premiere)
‘My introduction to the world of music was through trad, with the Kerry Polka being the first tune I learned. My Dad was a musician with a love for trad and mandolin, and he passed his musicality and ear for music on to me and my brother. My brother went on to play concertina while I learned tin whistle and fiddle. In 2005 my Dad passed away. This piece is a reflection on this brief time through the lens of the first tune I learned; The Kerry Polka.’
Bedřich Smetana: String Quartet No. 1, 2nd mvt ‘Allegro moderato de Polka’
Bedrich Smetana is commonly termed the ‘Father of Czech Music’. Though technically from Bohemia, at this time of his life there were shifts against the ruling Austro-Hungarian Empire and the gradual emergence of the championing of the language and music of the Czech people. The first string quartet, from which this ‘Polka’ is taken is one of his remarkable chamber works that has an explicit programmatic association. Written in 1876 the title itself, From My Life (Z mého života), was fully revealed by Smetana himself in a detailed letter to a friend:
“My intention was to paint a tone picture of my life. The first movement depicts my youthful leanings toward art, the Romantic atmosphere, the inexpressible yearning for something I could neither express nor define, and also a kind of warning of my future misfortune . . . The long insistent note in the finale owes its origin to this. It is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which in 1874 announced the beginning of my deafness. I permitted myself this little joke, because it was so disastrous to me. The second movement, a quasi- polka, brings to mind the joyful days of youth when I composed dance tunes and was known everywhere as a passionate lover of dancing…..”
Selection from WoodWorks (Trad. Norwegian; arr. Danish String Quartet) Peat Dance; Waltz after Lasse in Lyby; Ribers No. 8 (‘Sterrands Rand’); Sønderho Bridal Triology – Part II Brudestykke
The Danish String Quartet is a classical string quartet with a passion for Nordic folk music. They’ve brought their unique arrangements of Scandinavian folk tunes to the concert stage and CD.
‘We are first and foremost a classical string quartet, we spend most of our time playing music by masters such as Beethoven and Bartok. Alongside this repertoire though, we’ve been digging into the roots of our local music tradition – Nordic folk music. For us traditional Nordic folk music is unique. It may reflect a different, simpler time, but we find this music incredibly relevant and meaningful to play. For several years, we experimented with bringing this music to the concert stage as a classical string quartet. In September 2013 we decided to spend a week in the Danish countryside arranging and recording a handful of our favourite tunes. The setup was simple: we had no recording label, no long-term plan, and we just barely
managed to cover the costs via a crowdfunding campaign. Following the completion of recording, we sent it to Dacapo Records, and they liked what they heard. Wood Works became a reality!’
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Full biographies are available on our website. You can scan this QR code on your phone or tablet to take you straight there:
SAVE THE DATE
We also look forward to welcoming you to our 2026 festival, so why not pop the date in your diary now? Join us Thursday 13th to Sunday 16th August 2026.
JOIN US AT OUR UPCOMING EVENTS
Silk and Strings – A Pipa’s Journey follows this performance directly at 9.30pm. Be immersed in the magical world of the pipa and qin with guest artist, Chia-Yin Hung.
FRIDAY, 15 AUGUST 2025
Music by the Sea Concert
SATURDAY, 16 AUGUST 2025
Family Concert at the Lighthouse Concert
Musical Map Live Events Experience
Celebration of Kerry Concert
Folk Effects Concert
Pärt and Glass Concert
SUNDAY, 17 AUGUST 2025
When Mozart met the Pipa
String Extravaganza Finale
7.30pm | Church of the Immaculate Conception
11.00am | Lighthouse, Cromwell Point
From 2.00pm | All across Valentia Island
6.15pm | Church of the Immaculate Conception
7 30pm | Church of the Immaculate Conception
9.30pm | Church of the Immaculate Conception
1.00pm | Church of St. Dorarca and St. Teresa, Chapeltown
7.30pm | Church of the Immaculate Conception, Knightstown
To find out more about our 2025 events, please visit www.chambermusiconvalentia.com/your-2025-festival/ or call +353 (83) 096 5977
GO RAIBH MAITH AGAT
We are grateful to all of our Friends and Supporters for their commitment and contributions We acknowledge the assistance of Arts Council Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, RTÉ Supporting the Arts, Kerry County Council / Comhairle Contae Chiarraí, Fexco, Music Generation Kerry, and those contributors who wish to remain anonymous.
The Festival would not be possible without the help of so many volunteers on Valentia who assist with venues, equipment, advertising, accommodation and a host of other behind the scenes activities that make the Festival run smoothly
OUR PRINCIPAL PARTNERS
OUR FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS
Margaret and Denis Dullea
Margot Ferwerda
Rosaleen O’Muircheartaigh
Professor Éamann and Mrs Mary Breathnach
David and Brenda Wilkes
Marie-Claire Stacey