Category: Music

Richard Strauss: ‘the greatest genius of the age’

Thanks to its intrepid artistic director, Fergus Sheil, Irish National Opera is currently midway through its latest production – Richard Strauss’ single act Salome at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. A concert performance in Wexford’s National Opera House on March 3 preceded the fully staged production by Bruno Ravella that opened at BGET last Tuesday.…

A composer with profound sense of the sacred

Two recent performances at the NCH gave me considerable satisfaction. The first, with the NSO conducted by Dubliner Killian Farrell, currently general music director of the state theatre in Meiningen, had Finghin Collins as the brilliant interpreter of Stanford’s 2nd Piano Concerto – a piece demanding verve and virtuosity supplied with breathtaking dash by Mr…

Impressive Irish composer celebrated

This year celebrates a number of composer centenaries, among them the anniversary of the death of Dublin-born Charles Villiers Stanford, who played an important role in music education in the UK where he was professor at Cambridge and a founder of London’s Royal College of Music. The NSO remembers him at the NCH tomorrow (February…

A finger firmly on the pulse of the arts

With his death on November 17, the long life of the doyen of our composers – Seóirse Bodley – came to an end. May he rest in peace. Born in Dublin on April 4, 1933, Seóirse Bodley attended the CBS Coláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square where the curriculum was taught through Irish. Bodley also studied…

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A feast for Irish opera lovers

October means only one thing for Irish opera lovers – the Wexford Festival founded in 1951 by local GP and opera enthusiast, Dr Tom Walsh. His idea was the revival of operas that had disappeared from the repertoire and injecting them with new life. While this policy continues, Wexford also produces relatively recent compositions. This…

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Sometimes pieces are noticeable by their absence

While the NSO’s season at the National Concert Hall began early last month, the Hall’s own International Series commenced on September 19 with the Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra conducted by fellow Hungarian András Keller. Renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard was the soloist in Bartók’s soulful 3rd Piano Concerto written shortly before the composer’s death in…

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