Sean Rafferty crosses the Irish Sea this week to introduce this week's series of Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts recorded at the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival.

This year the festival has spread its wings to include venues that include stately homes, gardens, waterways and a city gallery. Today we visit Dublin City Gallery, the National Botanic Gardens, and Kilruddy House - the 19th-century tudor revival mansion where Arabella Steinbacher and Robert Kulek play Beethoven's First Violin Sonata Op 12, which is dedicated to one of his teachers, Antonio Salieri.

Howard Ferguson was born in Belfast. During World War II, he helped Myra Hess run a morale-boosting series of concerts at the National Gallery in London. Michael Collins and Michael McHale play his romantic Four Short Pieces for clarinet and piano in another gallery, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane.

Today's concert ends with Cuarteto Casals's performance of the Dissonance Quartet by Mozart at Ireland's National Botanic Gardens. The quartet K.465 earned its nickname from the opening bars which provide the only slow introduction of Mozart's string quartets.

Beethoven: Violin Sonata in D major, Op 12 No 1
Arabella Steinbacher (violin), Robert Kulek (piano)

Ferguson: Four Short Pieces for Clarinet
Michael Collins (clarinet), Michael McHale (piano)

Mozart: String Quartet in C major, K 465 'Dissonance'
Cuarteto Casals

First broadcast 24/06/2014. Show less