Various venues, Bantry, West Cork Jun 27- Jul 5 1850-788789

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival can always be relied upon to provide something a little different. There are some major anniversaries being celebrated this year. Haydn, Mendelssohn and Purcell will all feature in Bantry (the latter not only through his own music, but also through the premiere of John Kinsella’s On Hearing Purcell and Shostakovich at Bantry House).

But this year’s programme carries a title that will find wide resonance in a recession-hit world, On the Edge of the Abyss. The title was prompted by Sofia Gubaidulina’s work of that name, a piece that’s scored for seven cellos and two waterphones. Never mind the fact that the abyss she means is “the zone between the fingerboard and the bridge of a string instrument”.

There are return visits by Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten (in Fauré, Duparc and Purcell), Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov (who offers Shostakovich’s complete Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87), solo Bach from French cellist Anne Gastinel and Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova, the delightful voices of Trio Mediaeval, a visit by Russian composer Lera Auerbach (left), who’ll also perform on piano, in Mussorgsky as well as her own music, a strand of works by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, and Mozart’s great wind serenades. And what does a waterphone sound like? You’ll have to go to Bantry to find out.