From 1723 to the end of his life in 1750, Bach spent his time, more or less, in Leipzig where he was kantor at the Thomasschule. His duties included providing music for the city’s two major churches – St Thomas and St Nicholas – as well as for two of the smaller ones – St…
French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recital at the National Concert Hall (NCH) on Tuesday (March 29) may well fit the axiom “a little of what you fancy does you good” as he devotes his programme to fancies or fantasias from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Fantasias While the programme is built around four of Mozart’s…
Two recent National Symphony Orchestra programmes at the National Concert Hall focussed on a pair of well-established contemporary American composers, each of whom has his own particular following but with one better known through his involvement with the ‘silver screen’ not least Jaws and Star Wars. New York-born John Williams is the more recognisable household…
The National Concert Hall’s International Concert Series 2022 began on February 13 with an impressive recital by South Africa-born soprano Golda Schultz and Texan pianist Jonathan Ware. Their programme celebrated women composers – Clara Schumann with her lesser known German contemporary, Emilie Mayer; the century-later English composer Rebecca Clarke, who spent the latter part of…
In 1994, then Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins, set up a review group – Provision and Institutional Arrangements Now for Orchestras and Ensembles (PIANO) – to examine among other things “the roles as they evolved of the performing groups in RTÉ with particular reference to which the broadcasting and…
As I write I hope Covid-19 restrictions will soon be lifted. Two groups – Irish National Opera (INO) and the National String Quartet Foundation – have had their current tours disrupted with changes to starting times and even some cancellations. Supported by Culture Ireland, INO’s nationwide tour of Vivaldi’s Bajazet is drawing to a close…
As I rarely ‘read the deaths’ in the daily newspapers, notable departures sometimes escape me. This happened recently with the death on November 9 of the doyen of our composers, John Kinsella. We first met in the 1970s serving on the organising committee of Dublin’s ‘20th Century Music Festival’. At the time John was RTÉ’s…
Seasonably festooned with Christmas trees and wreathes, the National Concert Hall was in celebratory mode earlier this month. And why not? After all, it was marking its 40th anniversary with an RTÉ NSO gala under principal conductor Jaime Martín. The music brought the première of an NCH/NSO commissioned work, The Treaty Debates by Brian Byrne,…
While Covid-19 continues to cast doubts over live music performances, some promoters are battling on. One such has a three-week tour of the country by piano supremo, Finghin Collins, currently in hand. Mr Collins actually began his serpentine journeying on November 13 at Tullynally Castle in Co. Westmeath overlooking Lough Derravaragh, the legendary lake of…
Following Wexford Festival Opera’s conclusion on Halloween, Irish National Opera (INO) raised its curtain on Beethoven’s Fidelio at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre earlier this week with further performances tomorrow and Saturday, November 12 and 13. Around 1802 Beethoven became acquainted with the play, Léonore, by French author Jean Nicolas Bouilly. Reading it in a German translation…