Friday, January 27, 2012

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

Thursday, January 19, 2012

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 50th 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.