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…
On the occasion of his retirement in 2018 as organist of Christ Church Cathedral Waterford, Dean Maria Jansson described Eric Sweeney as “a man of deep faith for whom music is his language with God”. Eric Sweeney’s final service coincided with the ordination to the Church of Ireland priesthood of former leader of the Green…
Ireland’s October music calendar is usually dominated by events in Wexford and, happy to relate, following last year’s Covid restrictions, the curtain will rise again on the town’s international opera festival next week. Reinstate Running from Tuesday October 19 to Sunday October 31, festival director Rosetta Cucchi has managed to salvage her 2020 plans and…
Remembering this year is the fiftieth anniversary of Stravinsky’s death, I wrote about him in this column of September 2 reaching his Symphony in C of 1940 when he had settled in America. This followed the death of his first wife Katya and marriage in March 1940 to extrovert artist and divorcee Vera Sudeykina. They…
Well, as Ira Gershwin, brother of George, said, “Things are looking up”, to which I will add “Praise, the Lord” as the National Concert Hall welcomes back its audiences. Commemorating its 40th anniversary, the NCH, which opened as the country’s principal concert venue on September 9, 1981 (I was there), presented a less demanding, but…
Looking at a BBC Prom, devoted to Stravinsky, on TV recently reminded me that this year commemorates the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death in New York in 1971. Igor Stravinsky was born into a musical family in Oranienbaum near St Petersburg in 1882. While his parents hoped he would become a lawyer Igor persuaded…
A while ago I wrote about Co. Wicklow composer Ina Boyle (1889-1967) following the issue of a CD of some of her orchestral music. Happy to relate another CD, this time containing 33 of her songs, has come my way. On the Delphian label – DCD 34264 – I also find it a very attractive…
Last time around I mentioned the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and its Music Bursary as well as this year’s principal winner – Phoebe White whose cellist brother, Killian, received the award in 2018. But there are two smaller, yet significant, sections to the main bursary. One is the €5,000 Jago Award, the other being the…