The festival will continue on Easter Saturday in Bantry House when the Callino quartet is joined by some uniquely gifted music-making friends.

The first concert of the evening will begin at 8pm with Mozart's Dissonance string quartet, K465, an enormously popular work. Pianist Maria McGarry will face the task of Schumann's 'Papillons', a series of intricate miniatures for solo piano, and then join forces with the Callino for a chamber version of Mozart's 13th piano concerto, K415. The later concert, beginning at 10.30pm, will comprise only one work, but such a momentous work finds few rivals in the arena of chamber music.

Schoenberg's string sextet, 'Verklarte Nacht', is not only the tale of a lover's distress but a hugely significant work in terms of its musical history since it marks the bridge to the new music that Schoenberg consequently pioneered.

Irish Chamber Orchestra violist Cian O Duill and cellist Christopher Marwood, of the RTE Vanbrugh quartet, will join the Callino in this magnificent venture.

Sunday's and Monday's programmes, again taking place at Bantry House, find clarinetist Carol McGonnell with the Callino in Mozart's clarinet quintet, among more Schumann from McGarry, string quartets by Haydn and Shostakovich and a Beethoven piano trio known as 'The Ghost'. The weekend will close with Shostakovich's G minor piano quintet.

>> Limerick Choral Union will celebrate its 30th year by performing Karl Jenkins's 'The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace' in the University of Limerick's concert hall on Good Friday at 8pm. Jenkins's work was commissioned by the UK Royal Armouries to mark the millennium but, as our TV screens filled up with horrific images from Kosovo, the composer felt compelled to dedicate the mass to the victims of this tragedy. The mass is a moving listening experience, enhanced by a text which includes words from the Islamic call to prayer and the Bible, as well as the words of Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson and a survivor of Hiroshima.

Audiences will also enjoy two Mozart works, his 'Laudate Dominum' and his 'Missa Brevis', K275.

Looking further north, to proceedings in Galway, 12 April will mark the end of music for Galway's 25th anniversary season. The final concert will be given by the Irish Baroque Orchestra and Resurgam in a visit to St Nicholas Collegiate church in the heart of the city. Under director Mark Duley and with soloists Lynda Lee and Owen Willetts, the orchestra and choir will perform three musical settings of the powerful 13th century Christian poem, 'Stabat Mater'. Vivaldi and Pergolesi's interpretations of the text both call for solo voices with strings, but Scarlatti's musical translation of the poem find feet in a 10-part choir, accompanied by continuo. This performance will take place also in Dublin on 11 April in the Church of St Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street, Dublin, at 8pm.

Finally, for an entirely different Good Friday experience, you could pop in and out of the NCH to hear the premiere Irish performance of Morton Feldman's 2nd string quartet, given by the Pellegrini Quartet. The composer had a close friendship with Samuel Beckett;

this concert is presented as part of the centenary festival of the writer. I personally think it verges on cruelty to musicians: the performance is set to begin at 12 noon and end sometime around 6pm. There is no intermission.

Donations to the Pellegrini Quartet's physiotherapy fund at the door.