Looking at a BBC Proms TV transmission recently I was reminded of this year being the sesquicentennial anniversary of the birth of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (VW) on October 12, 1872. The broadcast included one of VW’s best-loved works – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis – expressively played by the Sinfonia of…
With its Dublin HandelFest running in Dublin Castle over the weekend – Friday July 15 to Sunday July 17, the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) continues its devotion to the composer who lived in Dublin for almost a year across 1741/42. Conducted by Peter Whelan, tomorrow’s 7.30pm opening event in the Castle’s St Patrick’s Hall, has…
Despite the wretched Covid-19 causing the cancellation of a number of events at the National Concert Hall and other venues across the country, I am hoping the upcoming collaboration between Irish National Opera (INO) and Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre (BGET) will proceed with its scheduled performances of Puccini’s Tosca at the BGET on July…
Opera and the organ are currently dominant features on the musical landscape. The former comes mainly through Irish National Opera (INO) with its production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda having a successful run in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre and other centres before Wexford and Limerick draw it to a close. With Sinead Campbell-Wallace in the title role,…
With President Higgins on hand at the NCH to present the awards and the accompanying NSO under Gerhard Markson, the 12th triennial Dublin International Piano Competition finals had four outstanding young musicians – two Japanese, one Czechian and one Russian – vying for the €15,000 first prize along with a series of engagements across the…
The NSO’s concert at the National Concert Hall tomorrow evening – Friday 20 – brings together two pianist/composers whose lives were intrinsically linked following their first meeting in Düsseldorf in 1853. The senior, by 14 years, was Leipziger Clara Schumann married to composer Robert Schumann; the other was Hamburg-born Johannes Brahms. Robert and Clara were…
This week’s NSO event at the National Concert Hall (tomorrow May 6) brings young Portuguese conductor – Joana Carneiro – to its rostrum for the first time. Her programme includes Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with mezzo Tara Erraught and Stravinsky’s 1947 revised version of his ballet Petrushka. However, before these familiar and popular pieces…
Kansas-born mezzo Joyce DiDonato returned to the National Concert Hall (NCH) recently as part of its International Concert Series 2022. The impeccable instrumental ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro accompanied her again, this time directed by young Russian conductor and harpsichordist, Maxim Emelyanychev. Strangely-lit Entitled EDEN, the evening was a strangely-lit staged event where a circular centrepiece…
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…