This year’s Dublin International Chamber Music Festival opens with a concert at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore. What’s left of the barracks, just a ghost of its former self, is now an attractive cultural centre. But in 1916 it was where the leaders of the Rising were court-martialled, and where some 3,000 suspected insurgents were also held.
Mary McAuliffe and Liz Gillis have written a book about the 77 women who were among their number. And, by coincidence, the festival programme that will soon be played by the Irish clarinettist Carol McGonnell and the US new-music specialists the Jack Quartet is entirely of music by women. McGonnell, whom the Los Angeles Times has called an “elastic, exacting, stupendous soloist”, plays in Meridians, a new clarinet quintet by the Irish composer Ann Cleare , and Duft, a solo piece by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho , who died last year at the age of 70.
“I really, really wanted to programme Saariaho, because it’s the anniversary of her death. And I thought Duft would be a very nice pairing with Ann’s music, which I’ve been playing for more than a decade.” She calls Cleare “an extremely philosophical composer” who has “a very, very interesting way of using sound”.
And she describes the composer’s approach in a way that evokes a kind of musical pointillism, saying that “it’s like pieces of puzzle that can be moved around and placed at different points to create a kind of journey. And I also think Ann has re.
