This month commemorates the bicentenary of the birth of the Austrian organist/composer Anton Bruckner. The anniversary was celebrated at the NCH last week through his 4th Symphony (Romantic) played by the visiting Bavarian Radio Orchestra, one of Europe’s finest broadcasting ensembles, under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. Born in Ansfelden in Upper Austria, Bruckner…
As promised last time round here is a little more about Waterford-born composer William Vincent Wallace (1812-1865). Now, it must be remembered Wallace revelled in story telling with one commentator claiming he was ‘charming but unprincipled, and his habitual untruthfulness makes it hard to determine real facts about him’. Wallace definitely was in Mexico City…
Time was when William Vincent Wallace was a household name with his music gracing many an operatic stage and concert venue and being played and sung in many a homely parlour. However, time and fashions change and what is enjoyed by one generation may well be relegated to obscurity by the next. With soprano Rachel…
Dublin’s fondness for Handel’s music goes back to 1742 when the composer lived in Abbey Street. He had brought with him from London the score of his oratorio Messiah, which had its first performance in the Fishamble Street Musick Rooms on April 13 that year. Handel directed the performance from the harpsichord with London-born Dublin-domiciled…
The 2023/24 NSO subscription series drew to a close recently with a particularly satisfying performance at the National Concert Hall of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. The occasion, with highly agreeable soloists Miah Persson, soprano, Jennifer Johnston, mezzo, Valentyn Dytiuk, tenor and Evgeny Stavinsky, bass, also involved the National Symphony Chorus under Jaime Martín. The performance…
June brings with it a number of special musical events not least the ‘Pipewroks International Organ and Choral Festival’ and the ‘Dun Laoghaire summer Sunday evening organ recitals’ in St Michael’s Church. The former opened its doors on June 19 afternoon with a master class in Milltown’s St Philip’s Church directed by Geoffrey Webber, a…
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…