The Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, which began on Tuesday June 4, at the unusual venue of Richmond Barracks in Inchicore with the visiting JACK Quartet and Irish clarinettist Carol McGonnell, had an interesting mix by US and Irish composers including Ruth Crawford Seeger, Juri Seo and Belfast-born Ann Cleare who holds a PhD from…
Although something of a fiasco at its première on March 6, 1853, at the La Fenice opera house in Venice, Verdi’s La traviata now ranks among the most popular of his operas and, indeed, the most frequently performed in the Italian repertoire worldwide. La traviata has returned to Irish National Opera for a series of…
Castletown House, in Co Kildare, was the founding venue for the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival in 1970. It was soon joined by other stately homes, not least Russborough near Blessington in Co. Wicklow that was at the time the home of Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit. Generous supporters of the arts, they…
A recent NSO concert at the NCH had the orchestra’s principal conductor Jaime Martín directing a Slavonic programme through music by Smetana (Vltava, a marvellous musical picture of that river as it flows through the Bohemian countryside and celebrating the composer’s bicentenary this year), Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations had Madrid-born Pablo Ferrández as…
As the main work in tomorrow’s NSO concert at the NCH will be Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony I had intended this column to be principally devoted to the Russian master. However, taking pen to paper I realised that tomorrow’s opening work is by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana born 1824, died in 1884 with this year…
Over the past number of years the National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus have focussed their Holy Week concert on religious themes. This event normally takes place on Good Friday afternoon not, in my view, the ideal time as it clashes with the sacred liturgy in many churches and there are those who would like to…
Thanks to its intrepid artistic director, Fergus Sheil, Irish National Opera is currently midway through its latest production – Richard Strauss’ single act Salome at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. A concert performance in Wexford’s National Opera House on March 3 preceded the fully staged production by Bruno Ravella that opened at BGET last Tuesday.…
Two recent performances at the NCH gave me considerable satisfaction. The first, with the NSO conducted by Dubliner Killian Farrell, currently general music director of the state theatre in Meiningen, had Finghin Collins as the brilliant interpreter of Stanford’s 2nd Piano Concerto – a piece demanding verve and virtuosity supplied with breathtaking dash by Mr…
I recently mentioned 2024 as a year for remembering the centenary of a number of composers’ births or deaths. One such is Charles Villiers Stanford who was born in Dublin’s Herbert Street on September 30, 1852 and died in London on 29 March, 1924. Ideals of Brahms Stanford’s music is akin to the romantic ideals…
This year celebrates a number of composer centenaries, among them the anniversary of the death of Dublin-born Charles Villiers Stanford, who played an important role in music education in the UK where he was professor at Cambridge and a founder of London’s Royal College of Music. The NSO remembers him at the NCH tomorrow (February…