Sacred Symphonies

Renowned choir Resurgam are presenting a mini festival celebrating the 400th anniversary of the death of the great Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli. Sacred Synphonies explores different aspects and periods of his work in a ‘surround-sound’ format in the spectacular circular space of City Hall, and the choir will be joined by string players from the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the sackbuts and cornetts of the period wind ensemble QuintEssential, and Malcolm Proud on organ. The first concert on Sun 4 Feb focuses on Gabrieli’s early vocal style; Sun 11 includes music from the 1597 Symphoniae Sacrae, with 8 voices and 4 each of string and brass; while the whole shebang comes together on Sun 18 for large-scale works from the Symphoniae Sacrae liber secundus of 1615 and the 33 part Magnificat. www.resurgam.ie

Sundays@ Noon

Where else would you be of a Sunday@ Noon but at the Hugh Lane Gallery for some fab free music. Sun 5 Feb sees violinist Maria Ryan team up with Una Hunt on piano for a fascinating programme of Mozart’s Violin Sonata K301, Arvo Part’s Fratres and Szymanovski’s Violin Sonata Op 9. On Sun 12 the Ensemble Blumina, a trio of oboe, piano and bassoon, play works by Jean Francaix, Andre Previn and Francis Poulenc. Sun 19 sees the start of a major new series, with pianists Fionnuala Moynihan and Peter Tuite performing the Complete Piano Sonatas of Haydn in a series of 12 recitals over the next 2 years. The first concert features Sonatas in E flat major, C minor, C major and E minor. On Sun 26 there's music by Vivaldi and Handel with soprano Deirdre Moynihan, Laoise O'Brien on recorders, Kate Hearne on cello and David Adams on harpsichord. Afterwards you can head up to the Unitarian Church on Stephens Green for another free concert (bucket collection for the organ restoration fund) featuring young baritone Benjamin Russell and pianist David O'Shea. www.hughlane.ie

RTE Horizons

Missed the boat a bit on the RTE Horizons series – free contemporary music concerts at the NCH featuring the RTE NSO; there was some great stuff including Kevin Volans and Ronan Guilfoyle, but there’s still time to catch the final concert next Tue (1.05pm) when the focus is on Garrett Sholdice. World premieres of two new works composed especially for this concert by Sholdice (Fall and Disappear) and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, arrangements by Sholdice of the Bach chorale Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig for string orchestra, brass ensemble and full orchestra, and Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week At Ninety. And you can hear the Composer in Conversation at 12.30pm www.rte.ie/nationalsymphonyorchestra

Music

Another New Year, another New Year’s Resolution: I will update my blog at least once a week; I will update my blog at least once a week… A bit late I know but life and other mysteries have a habit of intervening. In the meantime, some nice music happening around the place. The Irish Composers Collective presents new works for soprano and viola at the NCH’s John Field Room tonight (Thur 19 Jan), including a jazz-inspired waltz (Shades of Meaning), a musical plea for ‘Organ Donation’, settings of Dickinson and Yeats, and a piece of aural hallucination. At the same venue on 31 Jan pianist and ICC member David Bremner and soprano Elizabeth Hilliard perform Garett Sholdice's Three Lieder after Franz Schubert, also written especially for the duo, as well as Bremner's own The bright kids (logic ballad), Webern's Vier Lieder and Schubert's from Schwangesang.

Renowned clarinettist Michael Collins celebrates his 50^th birthday in style with a lovely concert at St Patrick’s Church in Dalkey on Tue 24 Jan. Presented by the indefatigable John Ruddock of the AML, it features the magnificent Vogler Quartet playing Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op 132 and, with Collins, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

The Government Inspector

review Abbey Theatre

It must have seemed like a great idea: take Gogol’s snappy satire on the petty corruption of small town officials in Czarist Russia, transpose it to an Irish idiom and let the resonances and parallels role. In the capable hands of the observant and ever-witty Roddy Doyle and director Jimmy Fay, a man with proven comic sensibilities, what could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot actually – the most basic problem being that for much of the time it just isn’t funny enough. There are some real gems in there – the scene where the mistaken ‘Government Inspector’, invited to sup at the mayor’s house, is by turn slobbered over by a bevy of fawning sycophants and a lusty and highly competitive mother and daughter combo, is a sheer delight – but they only serve to highlight the lack of spark elsewhere. An over-reliance on slapstick mightn’t be to everyone’s taste, but if it’s done well it can really work; here, alas, it’s just a bit tedious.

Despite the large cast it’s all a tad underwhelming, and even some of the old reliables aren’t always up to scratch – Don Wycherley’s Mayor, for example, is all shouts and growls, although Marion O’Dwyer and Liz Fitzgibbon as his wife and daughter are a much better match. Conor Murphy’s complicated revolving set works best when the bare bones are exposed – stairs going nowhere and doors opening into nowhere else, but what’s with all the plastic sacks? As for the Irishness, a fair few brown envelopes work their way into the equation, but we’re still dealing with a confusing profusion of Ivanoviches and Alexandroviches along with a mishmash of costumes – why not go the whole hog and give us a proper bit of paddywhackery. All in all, the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts.

Sundays@ Noon & Saturday@ Dublin Castle

Coming up at the Hugh Lane Gallery, the widely-acclaimed ConTempo String Quartet celebrate Romanian National Day on Sun 4 Dec as part of the free Sundays @ Noon series. They play Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet, Bartok’s Six Romanian Dances and are joined by clarinetist Claudio Mansutti for Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. On Sun 11 Ensemble Avalon play Beethoven’s Violin Sonata no 5 in F major and Piano Trio in C minor. www.hughlane.ie

And on Sat 3 Dec you can catch Ukrainian wunderpianist Alexei Gorlatch, winner of the 2009 Dublin International Piano Competition among many other prizes, in a Music Network recital at Dublin Castle. He plays Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms and Bill Whelan’s ‘The Currach’. www.musicnetwork.ie

The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

Siren Productions have come up with a double whammy of sorts with their latest show, The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore which previews at Project’s Space Upstairs from Thur 1 Dec and opens on Tue 6. In a clever contemporary take on John Ford’s darkly comic Jacobean masterpiece ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, this tumultuous tale unfolds as a film director assembles a cast and crew to film the play. It’s a seductive case of life imitating art as a parallel world of intrigue and desire, lust and obsession begins to inhabit the set, with the boundaries of these two worlds becoming increasingly blurred as reality, fantasy, life and art collide with disastrous results. Combining live theatre and pre-filmed scenes, the always fascinating Selina Cartmell directs two top notch casts: on stage Louis Lovett, Kate Stanley Brennan, Cathy Belton, Phelim Drew and Barbara Brennan; and on film Simon Delaney, Tom Hickey, John Kavanagh, Lorcan Cranitch and Paul Reid. Music is by Conor Linehan, set by Sabine Dargent and costumes by Gabby Rooney. www.projectartscentre.ie

The Government Inspector

Tis almost the season to be jolly, and amid all the glitz and glitter the Abbey has come up with a Christmas show with a difference, a new version of Gogol’s The Government Inspector by the ever-ebullient Roddy Doyle, which opens tomorrow Wed 30 Nov. This is Doyle’s second time taking on a classic, his version of Synge’s Playboy, written with Bisi Adigun, was a real treat, and this new show sees director Jimmy Fay back at the helm. Casting a satirical eye over endemic bureaucracy and corruption, Gogol’s comedy has a delicious relevance that Doyle will no doubt exploit to the hilt – brown envelopes and underhand bribes abound as a befuddled group of anxious small town dignitaries await the arrival of the eponymous inspector but, as in all the best comedies, nothing is as it seems. A terrific cast is headed up by Don Wycherley, Marion O’Dwyer, Gary Cooke, Mark Doherty, Joe Hanley and Rory Nolan, with lighting by Kevin Tracy, set by Conor Murphy, costumes by Catherine Fay, music by Denis Clohessy and choreography by Liz Roche. Just the thing to ward off those budget blues. www.abbeytheatre.ie

Concorde & Ulysses

Concorde contemporary music ensemble celebrate their 35th birthday with Up Close with Music, a series of six free afternoon concerts in gallery spaces including the Rubicon Gallery, the Contemporary Music Centre and the Gallery of Photography. Each concert will feature a commissioned composer with a new work, as well as highlighting their extensive repertoire and new compositions from both Irish and international composers, including Stephen Gardner, Grainne Mulvey, Judith Ring, Ed Bennett, Korean composer Si-Hyun Yi and Slovenian composer Nina Senk. The series will pay tribute to the late James Wilson and will also focus on the music of Elliot Carter. The first two concerts are at the Rubicon Gallery on Sun 13 and Sun 27 Nov, featuring commissioned works from Dave Flynn and Rhona Clarke respectively. www.rubicongallery.ie

For more free music, head up to the Dublin Unitarian Church on Stephens Green at 3pm on Sun 13 for the final concert in their Organ Restoration Fund series. Fergal Caulfield conducts the Ulysses Chamber Choir in a programme of Hungarian-themed music including Brahms’ Ziegunerlieder and Listz’s Missa Choralis. There will be a post-concert bucket collection towards the cost of restoring the beautiful JW Walker Organ, built 100 years ago this year. www.dublinunitarianchurch.org

String Machine

Now this sounds fascinating: String Machine 2 at Project on Fri 28 Oct – and it’s Free! Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Goethe-Institut Ireland, the concert is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Irish and German traditional and electronic artists, Donal Lunny, Stephan Mathieu, Leopold Hurt and David Donohoe & Eamonn Doyle. New recorded works for stringed instruments were commissioned from Donal Lunny (bouzouki) and Leopold Hurt (zither) which were then used as the sole source material for digital recompositions by Stephan Mathieu and David Donohoe & Eamonn Doyle, with all the sounds being generated exclusively from the bouzouki and zither using various digital processes. That process forms the basis for this live improvised performance featuring collaborations between Lunny and Mathieu and between Hurt and Donohoe & Doyle. The concert will also feature solo performances from each of the artists, and a CD featuring the four commissioned works will be given free on admission. Cool or what! www.projectartscentre.ie