A trio of exciting and distinguished artists, Cork natives Eoin Ducrot and Aoife Burke are joined by Venetian pianist Chiara Opalio to present the penultimate concert in the Spotlight Chamber Music Series.

Their programme begins with the exuberant and boisterous opening of Beethoven’s “Ghost” trio, a nickname coined by the composer’s former piano student, Carl Czerny, in response to the work’s eerie and agitated central slow movement. All is forgotten, however, in the cheeky, happy-go-lucky Presto finale. Contemporary Irish composer Sam Perkin’s Freakshow will follow. Comprising seven movements – The Rat Circus, The Two-Headed Nightingale, The Living Skeleton, The Gentle Giant, The Angel of Death, Pandora’s Basket and The Armless Fiddler – it is an emotionally wide-ranging set of imaginative musical portraits of historical figures whose physical deformities were exhibited as carnival and circus sideshow spectacles during the mid-19^th and early 20^th centuries. To conclude, the trio will present Mendelssohn’s beloved and beautifully lyrical first piano trio, undoubtedly one of the composer’s finest and most substantial chamber works.

Musicians:

Eoin Ducrot – Violin

Aoife Burke – Cello

Chiara Opalio – Piano

Programme:

Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 “Ghost”

Sam Perkin: Freakshow

Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49

About the Musicians

Eoin Ducrot is one of Ireland’s foremost violinists of his generation, known for his versatility across solo, chamber, and contemporary music. Educated in Ireland, France and Switzerland, he completed his Performance and Specialised Soloist Masters with highest honours and studied with renowned artists including Raphael Oleg, Guy Braunstein and Leonidas Kavakos.

Ducrot has won numerous prestigious awards, both individually and in chamber music. He has gained international acclaim, performing at major European festivals such as Davos, Musikdorf Ernen, and the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. As a duo with pianist Chiara Opalio, he won first prize at the Hochschule für Musik Basel Duo Competition and was invited by Sir András Schiff to perform at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn.

As a soloist, Ducrot has appeared with orchestras including Sinfonieorchester Basel and the Kölner Orchester-Gesellschaft, and regularly guests with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and Tonhalle Orchester Zürich. He has worked under distinguished conductors like Paavo Järvi and Kent Nagano and served as guest concertmaster for various European orchestras.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Ducrot has premiered numerous works, including pieces dedicated to him and his ensembles. Beyond classical music, he is an accomplished baroque violinist and a skilled arranger in pop music, contributing to the success of Cian Ducrot’s chart-topping album Victory.

Ducrot is currently working as the assistant to Professor Raphael Oleg at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, and is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Vittorio Veneto Chamber Music Festival.

Selected by The Arts Council as a recipient of a Next Generation Artist Bursary 2020, cellist Aoife Burke leads a diverse career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, curator and producer.

An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with notable artists including Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Arto Noras and Richard Watkins, and groups such as The Vanbrugh, Navarra Quartet, ConTempo Quartet and the Gavin Bryars, Kirkos, Ficino and Crash Ensembles. Her love for chamber music was fostered, in tandem with many other influences, on the masterclass scheme at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and during a Chamber Studio mentorship with Richard Lester at King’s Place, London. Aoife has also appeared as soloist with orchestra several times both at home and abroad. Her début with the New York Concerti Sinfonietta in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2016 was described as “a thing of beauty…intelligent, poised, and refined”. (The Epoch Times)

Aoife studied at undergraduate level with Emma Ferrand at the RNCM in Manchester, and with Christoph Richter and Andreas Reiner at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany, graduating in 2014 with a first-class BMus. (Hons.). During the course of her studies, Aoife won the Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship and partook in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. She subsequently obtained a Master’s Degree in Arts with Distinction from the CIT Cork School of Music, where she studied under Christopher Marwood, and pursued further study on the Performance Certificate Course (Corso di Perfezionamento) at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Italy, with Paolo Bonomini and Francesco Dillon. As a session musician, she has recorded for Sinéad O’Connor, U2, The Police, Ed Sheeran and Van Morrison, among many others.

Young Venetian pianist Chiara Opalio is the winner of the prestigious Rahn Wettbewerb 2016. The same year she played Beethoven’s Second Concerto with the Aargauer Symphonie Orchester with Marc Kissóczy conducting. In 2017, she played Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana at the RSI in Lugano.

Chiara has performed in chamber music settings with Leonidas Kavakos, performs regularly with the cellist Julia Hagen, with whom she played in Vienna at the Wiener Konzerthaus, and in Firenze at Teatro alla Pergola, with the Irish violinist Eoin Ducrot, with whom she won 1st prize in the HSM Duo-Wettbewerb in Basel and with the Opalio Quintet, prize winners at many international competitions. She studied chamber music with F. Rados in Vienna and with A. Schiff at IMS Prussia Cove. In September 2011, Chiara was the only European of the six semi-finalists in the Clara Haskil Competition. She has completed two Master’s degrees at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel with Claudio Martinez Mehner, and she had the honour to be chosen by Sir András Schiff for the 2019-20 season of his “Building Bridges” concert series, with performances throughout Europe.

She is currently assistant for the class of Prof. Claudio Martinez Mehner for piano solo and Prof. Jan Schultsz for chamber music, sightreading and accompaniment at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, as well as coach accompanist for the cello class of Thomas Demenga. She also teaches a specialised course in Classical Piano Technique for Jazz Pianists at the Jazzcampus Hochschule für Musik Basel. Since 2024, she is also the official coach accompanist for the string department at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Chiara is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Vittorio Veneto Chamber Music Festival since 2022.