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…
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…