TEMPTED as I was, in the spirit of today's date to mire myself in all varieties and quantities of trouble by writing an elaboratelyspun spoof article on an event or scandal in the music business . . .

"Violinist to Perform Nude at Upcoming Arts Festival", "Original Britten Scores Destroyed in Arson Attack", that kind of thing . . . it would have meant that a certain musical event of note, happening next weekend, may have slipped past the attention of Sunday Tribune readers. It cannot be all fun and games, you see; my yoke is not so easy.

That said, I expect my yoke will be sufficiently eased by a trip to Bantry next weekend, as it will all who descend upon it for the same reason, the aforementioned "certain musical event of note". In this, its second year, it appears that the Callino & Friends chamber music festival could well become an annual 'event of note' and a welcome addition to the Irish music calendar to boot.

Naturally, there is significant potential for further improvement and development of the current formula, perhaps more in keeping with the remarkable expanse and diversity of the long internationallyestablished West Cork Chamber Music Festival, but this second year's programme already reflects a greater sense of confidence in itself, even by mere virtue of the inclusion of two works of a distinctively 21st century perspective.

All eyes will be on the new second violinist of the Callino, Salzburg-born Michaela Girardi, for whom this festival marks an Irish debut with the quartet but similarly, Sarah Sexton, who has moved to the hottest seat in the ensemble since Ioana PetcuColan's unfortunate departure last year, will be under no small pressure to fill her predecessor's shoes in this, the quartet's first return to Bantry House since this personnel change.

Finghin Collins, Carol McGonnell, John Finucane and Catherine Leonard are among the supplementary personnel for the weekend's activities, which begins, as it did last year, with an altogether appropriate Good Friday (6 April) performance of Haydn's Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross, Op 51 for string quartet. The Church of St Matthias, Ballydehob, hosts the 8pm performance for which admission is free but booking required.

From there on the festival returns home to Bantry House, which will first be treated to music most glorious on Easter Saturday night. Franck's violin sonata (it can never be heard too often) with Finghin Collins and Catherine Leonard is framed by the Callino's opening performance of Haydn's Bird quartet, Op 33/3 and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet with Carol McGonnell. It's a conspicuously affable programme but it will undoubtedly receive the highest standard of interpretation from all concerned.

Messiaen's compelling Quartet for the End of Time (1941) will be the highlight for me of Easter Sunday's 7.30pm concert. If Haydn's Seven Last Words is a spiritual experience, Messiaen's quartet is a true spiritual journey, seeped in the provocative tragedy of the composer's internment in a second world war prison camp, where it received its legendary premiere. Quartets from the respective pens of Beethoven (Op 18/3) and Mendelssohn (Op 80, F major) complete the evening's bill.

Bartok's Contrasts opens the last concert of the festival on Easter Monday (9 April), with John Finucane taking over the clarinet role in this intriguing Hungarian Folk /American Jazz work, commissioned by Benny Goodman and premiered in 1938.

After Beethoven's Op 95 quartet, the closing of the festival is placed in the capable hands of Collins and Leonard, who will perform French composer Ernest Chausson's Concert in D Major.

This is a great excuse for a return to Bantry and idyllic west Cork. I can't wait. All we need now is weather. I actually heard we're having a heatwave next weekendf