DUBLIN HANDELFEST 2026 | ‘Bierfiedlers and Rogues’

Polabian Bierfiedlers meet an Irish Rogue in the eighteenth century. They discover shared tunes, and experiment with how these melodies sound so different in each style. Polkas and Germanic tunes can be found in Irish manuscripts, as Irish and Scots melodies exist in central European collections. What might it have sounded like when these traditions met?

Polleke Saitenkratzer (Antoinette Lohmann), Räuber Kneißl (Ro Kraus), and Grommer Imbergen (Pieter van Lier) grew up in the Polarbian village of Kŕaż, a small (hypothetical) village that sat where the border of Germany and Poland is now. They learned all they know from the local concreter, the cook from the Inn, the beautiful wife of the sheep shearer, and the attractive son of the knife grinder from the next town over.Freedom of tempo and frequent rubato are typical of the Kŕaż style. This is not so common in other folk dances, but in Kraz it is a tradition that the musicians and dancers challenge each other...

 Rúni Ó Breisláin (Tadhg Sudlow) hails from Sliabh Caparnaum, two days sailing north of Ireland. He learned everything he knows from the monks, the local thatcher, and the friendly pirates that visited the island. Sliabh Caparnaum is a remote island said to exist off the northwest of Ireland, appearing in Richard Head’s 1670s satirical travel letters, where he describes that there is ‘in every field a fiddle.’

Join us for an evening of rousing music, and myths to capture the imagination! 

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Host or Publisher Irish Baroque Orchestra