RTÉ National Sympony Orchestra Announces New Season

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra

RTÉ National Sympony Orchestra Announces New Season

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra has announced details of its 2013-2014 programme, with over fifty concerts in Dublin, Castlebar, Cork, Kilkenny, Limerick, Navan, Tullamore and Waterford over a nine month period. The new season is to be launched at a free lunchtime concert in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Tuesday, 14 May — the concert will also be broadcast live on RTÉ Lyric FM. The full brochure can be downloaded here.

Guest soloists appearing with the orchestra during the season include the Swedish cellist Torléif Thedeen, the Finnish pianist Antti Siirala and the American violinist Stefan Jackiw. Irish musicians performing with the orchestra as soloists include the pianist Michael McHale, the soprano Miriam Murphy and the mezzo-soprano Imelda Drumm, among others. The orchestra’s principal conductor Alan Buribayev, now in his fourth season in the role, will be joined by Jayce Ogden, Eugene Tzigane, David Atherton, David Hill and Roy Goodman at various points throughout the season. The Irish pianist and conductor Barry Douglas also features.

A ‘taster concert’ held on 6 September is a new initiative, offering highlights of the upcoming season. A concert titled Inside the Music held on 3 November will look more closely at two works – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Hindemith’s Violin Concerto — in an event present by the musicologist and broadcaster Stephen Johnson. Regular pre-concert talks will also continue, with the Soundings series held at 7pm before concerts.

In terms of music programmed, there is a special focus on the music of Benjamin Britten with concerts in October and November. A series of concerts features his works Four Sea Interludes (from the opera Peter Grimes) and the cantata Saint Nicolas. The season also includes a collaboration with the Abbey Theatre for a programme based on Shakespeare, and the concert-staged world premiere of Raymond Deane’s opera The Alma Fetish.

The Horizons series, a lunchtime series curated by Irish composers and presented by the Bernard Clarke of RTÉ Lyric FM, continues next year, with four concerts in January and February. The series takes on a new concert format with ‘an “insight segment” where audiences are introduced to the new works with the composer on stage talking through some excerpts from the work’. Composers featured in the Horizons series are Rhona Clarke, Marion Ingoldsby, Seán Clancy and Brian Irvine.

The orchestra will perform a total of seven concerts outside Dublin, with a tour featuring the violinist Nicola Benedetti reaching Tullamore, Castlebar, Kilkenny and Navan; performances with the Swedish trumpet player and conductor Håkan Hardenberger in Limerick and Belfast; and a New Year performance in Cork on 3 January.

This will be the first season for the orchestra’s new leader, Helena Wood, following the retirement of Alan Smale.

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Published on 14 May 2013

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