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music · Saturday 8 August 2026 · 9:00pm 
Candlelight: Hans Zimmer's Best Works at Aula Maxima UCC
At Aula Maxima, University College Cork · University College Cork, College Road, Cork
At Aula Maxima, University College Cork · University College Cork, College Road, Cork
The Munster String Quartet takes to one of Cork’s most remarkable rooms on a Saturday night to play nothing but Hans Zimmer - the scores that have underscored some of cinema’s most vivid moments. If you grew up watching The Lion King, caught your breath in Inception, or felt the weight of Gladiator settle over you in a darkened cinema, you already know these themes. Hearing them played live by a string quartet, in a Victorian Gothic hall lit by hundreds of candles, is something else entirely. This is the late show on 8 August, a companion to the Leonard Cohen Candlelight concert earlier that evening, and it suits those who want to make a proper night of it in Cork.
The Munster String Quartet performs a sixty-minute programme drawn from Zimmer’s film career: Inception, Interstellar, Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Dune, The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Wonder Woman, Sherlock Holmes, Dunkirk and more. The format is intimate - 228 seats maximum in the hall - so no seat is far from the performers. Candles line the space and the room’s Tudor Gothic stone and stained glass do the rest of the work.
The Aula Maxima, meaning Great Hall, was built in 1847 to designs by the same firm responsible for the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Its crenellated parapets, carved limestone and east-wall stained glass window - added in 1866 in memory of mathematician George Boole, the college’s first professor of mathematics - make it one of the finest Victorian interiors in Ireland. For a concert like this, the setting is the event as much as the music.
Doors open 45 minutes before the show and there is no entry once it starts, so arriving in good time is worth it. Seating is assigned on a first-come, first-served basis within each ticket zone.
University College Cork sits on College Road, roughly a ten-minute walk south from the city centre. From Cork Kent railway station the walk takes about fifteen minutes; Bus Eireann and Cork city buses serve stops close to the campus. If you are driving in from outside Cork, the N22, N25 and N27 all feed into the city, and there is parking available on and around campus, though a Saturday evening in August may mean some searching - arriving a little early gives you more options.
Cork city repays time - the English Market is a short walk from campus, the riverfront along the Lee has good pubs and restaurants, and the hills above the city give you a sense of how compact and walkable it all is. There is more to see in Cork and across Co. Cork.
Heading to Aula Maxima, University College Cork in Cork? Cork has plenty more to see. Read the Cork area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.