BOYLE ARTS FESTIVAL

Various venues, Boyle, Co Roscommon Until Fri 31 071-9663085

For around one week in the year, Roscommon can almost be guaranteed to have more classical concerts than Dublin. In fact, it’s even more extreme than that. The town of Boyle, with its population of just over 2,500, accounts for the extra activity, which arrives courtesy of Boyle Arts Festival.

This year’s offerings include concerts by guitarist John Feeley (on Friday), rising tenor Ross Scanlon (at lunchtime on Monday), pianist Fiachra Garvey, the winner of the Charles J Brennan Prize and the McCullough Bursary at the Dublin International Piano Competition in May (on Tuesday), and Paris-based US pianist Ivan Ilic (on Wednesday).

Ilic will be appearing in Dublin next week, at the NCH John Field Room on Friday 31st, when he’ll play a complete programme of works for the left hand, Brahms’s arrangement of Bach’s D minor Chaconne, and 11 reworkings of Chopin Studies by Leopold Godowsky.