Pat O’Kelly Festival is a word that can be abused but with Great Music in Irish Houses I think it can be applied without hesitation. This annual event began in 1970 when it was then, and for many years afterwards, known as the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival. In its initial year it embraced…
Pat O’Kelly The final programme in the NCH’s 2018/19 International Concert Series on June 14 brings the welcome return of the London Symphony Orchestra. Under Italian maestro Gianandrea Noseda, the concert features music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Berlioz. Russian Daniil Trifonov is the soloist in Shostakovich’s 1st Piano Concerto with UK trumpeter Philip Cobb…
Pat O’Kelly Built between 1741 and 1755, Russborough House near Blessington is a fine example of Palladian architecture. The renowned Richard Cassels designed it for the brewer and property developer Joseph Leeson, who was created Earl of Milltown in 1763. Dublin’s Leeson Street is named after him. In 1952 Russborough became the home of…
Pat O’Kelly Three recent events engage an element of novelty. Two involve the RTÉ NSO at the NCH with the third, at nearby St Finian’s Lutheran Church, as part of a Music Network nationwide tour. On their seven-venue stop, German cellist Raphaela Gromes and pianist Julian Riem choose a programme with a strong Italian…
Pat O’Kelly ‘Treat’, meaning something that gives great pleasure, seems to be out of fashion but I am reminded of it recently in three programmes at the National Concert Hall, which I consider merit the accolade. The first comes from the period-instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) conducted by Budapest-born pianist András…
Pat O’Kelly Like the first performances of both Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Rome on February 20, 1816, and Verdi’s La Traviata in Venice on March 6, 1853, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was a flop at its Milan première on February 17, 1904. The principal problem with the Rossini lay with supporters of rival…
Pat O’Kelly New Music Dublin, cancelled in 2018 due to weather, then partially salvaged last September resurrected itself at the beginning of this month for an action-packed weekend. However, one would require exceptional stamina to cover the broad spectrum of its endeavours. As festival director John Harris commented, “the range of music being performed…
Pat O’Kelly Besides organising its touring programme, Music Network, which stemmed from the now defunct Music Association of Ireland’s ‘Country Tours’, also administers the government-sponsored Music Capital Scheme. The recently announced 2019 fund of €270,250 will be dispensed towards “the purchase of musical instruments to both non-professional performing groups and to individual performing musicians”.…
Pat O’Kelly In the presence of its indefatigable nonagenarian artistic director, the 2019 Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition drew an interesting contingent of young singers to the National Concert Hall at the end of January. For the first time in the triennial competition’s history, auditions were held abroad with jury chairman Jane Carty and…
Pat O’Kelly Following the departure of Kazakh musician Alan Buribayev when his extended contract expired in 2016, the RTÉ NSO has been without a principal conductor. In the ‘interregnum’ there have been a number of visiting artists on the podium not least Nathalie Stutzmann who has been principal guest conductor since 2017. Born in…