Summer in the Symphony

The RTE National Symphony Orchestra get busy for the summer with Tue lunchtime and Fri evening concerts at the NCH. Lunchtime fare includes a nice mix of Berlioz, Faure, Saint-Saens and a taste of a Haydn Cello Concerto on Tue 28, all under the baton of Principal Conductor Alan Buribayev. Strauss’s Blue Danube and Tchaikvosky’s Swan Lake share the stage with bluegrass fiddle music on 5 July. There’s Ravel and Bizet on Tue 12; Balfe, Butterworth and Bernstein on Tue 19 with soprano Katy Kelly; and Weber’s Bassoon Concerto on Tue 26. On Fri 1 July there’s a rare opportunity to hear Stanford’s 2nd Piano Concerto with soloist Finghin Collins, along with Tchaikovsky’s dramatic 5th Symphony. Other evening concerts include Operatic Favourites with South African soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon on Fri 8; the Great American Songbook on Fri 15; lyric fm’s Listeners Favourites on Fri 22; and the slightly dubious Symphonic Rock on Fri 29.

www.rte.ie/nationalsymphonyorchestra

Happy New Year with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra!

There’s some cracking concerts coming up from the NSO at the NCH this month. On Fri 7 the dazzling young Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang is the soloist in Rodrigo’s magnificent Concierto de Aranjuez, as well as giving the first Irish performance of Stephen Goss’s Albéniz Concerto. More from sunny Espana in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and da Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, with mezzo Fiona Murphy. And all will be revealed in a discussion/demonstration with Xuefei Yang at 7pm. On Fri 14 trombonist Christian Lindberg doubles up as director and soloist, with Jason Sinclair, in Jan Sandstrom’s Echoes of Eternity for two trombones and orchestra; there’s also music by Weber and Sibelius, and Lindberg features again in a late night Trombone recital with music by Lindberg and Cage – admission €5 or free with the evening concert ticket. Dvorak and Haydn on Fri 21, with NSO principal clarinetist John Finucane in the former’s Serenade for Winds and Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey in the latter’s Cello Concertos in C and D. Wispelwey turns up again in the late night recital with Bach’s Suite No 2 in D minor for solo cello. On Fri 28 Gerhard Markson conducts Bruckner’s massive Symphony No 8 in C minor, followed by a late night recital of Beethoven’s Piano Quintet in E flat featuring Finghin Collins and the RTE NSO Principal Winds. Excellent stuff, and as if that wasn’t enough the free lunchtime Horizons series kicks off on Tue 11 Jan – more of that anon. www.rte.ie/nationalsymphonyorchestra www.nch.ie

Price of a Pint!

Any impoverished students out there? How about skipping lectures next Fri (27 Feb) and heading into the NCH instead to see the RTE National Symphony Orchestra's final rehearsal (11-1pm) with conductor/composer James MacMillan and percussionist Colin Curie; a pre-performance discussion @6.45 with MacMillan and Curie; plus the full evening concert, featuring American composer Jennifer Higdon's exuberant Percussion Concerto - and all this for a mere fiver! And for another fiver, Curie gives a Percussion Masterclass on Thur 26 @5pm. Booking @ nch.ie

Great music in Feb from RTE National Symphony Orchestra

Hey, recessionista January is nearly over and there's some great music coming up in fab February. The RTE National Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven, Barry and Shostakovich at the NCH on Friday 6 Feb. First off is the world premiere of Gerald Barry's orchestral piece No other people - you can hear Barry discuss his angular and highly idiosyncratic work before the concert (6.45pm). The conductor is dynamic young Finnish maestro Pietari Inkinen, who incidentally is also a mean violinist. Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja is the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4 in G, brilliant, dramatic and at times surprisingly playful. the final piece is Shostakovich's Symphony No 5 in D minor, with it's potent mix of despair and triumphalism, written in 1937 after his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been banned by Stalin, and ironically titled ' A Soviet Artist's Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism'. In his memoirs, Shostakovich wrote of the finale "It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing, and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing..."

Other NSO concerts to watch out for include Janacek's thrilling Glagolitic Mass with the RTE Philharmonic Choir on Friday 20 Feb, conducted by Andreas Delfs; and the amazing percussionist Colin Currie playing Jennifer Higdon's Percussion Concerto on Friday 27 Feb in an unusually (for the NSO) contemporary concert, with works by James MacMillan (who also conducts), Fergus Johnston and leading Georgian composer Giya Kancheli.