Had all gone according to plan, I intended being in the National Botanic Gardens this evening (Thursday,  June 11) listening to music by Webern, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich played by the visiting Novus Quartet – a group of young Koreans creating a favourable impression wherever they perform. The Quartet’s visit was scheduled as part of the…

Had everything gone according to plan, Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra would be in the National Concert Hall next Tuesday (June 2) under Sir Mark Elder, its principal conductor since 2000. The concert promised an interesting Franco-Russian mix with Ravel surrounded by Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. I was looking forward to it, as the Hallé’s visits, despite the…

I am grateful for a recent email from Dr Una Hunt telling me that Charles Villiers Stanford’s opera The Veiled Prophet [of Khurassan] is now available to view on the RTÉ Player. The recording was made at last year’s Wexford Festival when David Brophy conducted its single performance. Excepting Polish baritone Simon Mechlieski as the…

Mozart’s two Piano Quartets date from the mid 1780s – a period that also brought, among many other things, five of his major piano concerti, two important string quartets and his opera Le nozze di Figaro. While there were earlier incursions by less well-remembered figures into the piano quartet arena, it took Mozart to raise…

In what has become a tradition, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra has established Good Friday afternoon at the National Concert Hall as an occasion for Bach through either one of his two Passions or something else from the treasury of his choral works. Due to my commitment to my own church’s liturgies I have had…

I had intended writing about Irish National Opera’s new production of Bizet’s Carmen due at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre this week but, alas, Covid-19 stepped in and brought the curtain down. It promised to be an interesting staging with Kerry’s Paula Murrihy as the sultry gypsy temptress of the title role and Kildare’s Celine…

With an amazing array of compositions, New Music Dublin invaded the National Concert Hall (NCH) over the four days from February 27 to March 1. Festival director John Harris and his team are to be congratulated on their efforts to introduce so much in such a concentrated period. I’m not sure how many, if any,…

It seems I can’t escape from Beethoven at the moment but then it is his 250th anniversary. A recent email from Gillian Hennessy of Cork’s Triskel Arts Centre tells me about its commemorative programmes. Supported by the National String Quartet Foundation, the final Triskel event takes place at lunchtime on Saturday, March 7 with the…

In 1803 Emanuel Schikaneder, who collaborated with Mozart on The Magic Flute but was then director of Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, approached Beethoven with an operatic libretto – Vestas Feuer (Vestal Flame). Initially the composer reacted favourably and completed almost two scenes before becoming disenchanted and laying it aside. However, two of its arias…

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, 2020 commemorates the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in Bonn in December 1770. Son of Johann, a court musician, and his wife Maria Magdalena, Ludwig was their second child. An older brother, also named Ludwig, lived only a few days in April of the previous year.…