NCH, Dublin Tonight 8pm 10-35 01-4170000
BELFAST PHILHARMONIC CHOIR, UO/KENNETH MONTGOMERY
Ulster Hall, Belfast Tonight 7.45pm £8-£22 048-90239955
SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW – A CELEBRATION OF THE MUSIC OF FREDERICK MAY
DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Chatham Row, Dublin Sat 2.30pm Adm free
WAVETRAIN
NCH, Kevin Barry Room, Dublin Wed 8.30pm 15 01-4170000
Today’s orchestral concerts in Dublin and Belfast could hardly be more different. The RTÉ NSO under Alan Buribayev (pictured) offers Prokofiev’s rarely heard Second Symphony (a symphony of “iron and steel”) in tandem with Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, presented not as a concert suite but as a semi- staged monologue written by Buribayev, with Arthur Riordan as Monsieur Jourdain.
The Ulster Orchestra’s programme opens with the most famous of symphonies, Beethoven’s Fifth, and follows it with Mozart’s Mass in C minor, with the Belfast Philharmonic Choir and a team of Irish soloists (Lynda Lee, Fiona Murphy, Eamonn Mulhall and Brendan Collins).
The McCann Hall at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama is the venue for Sunlight and Shadow, a celebration of the music of the Irish composer Frederick May (1911-85), whose early string quartet is currently featuring on a tour by the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet.
On Wednesday at the NCH Kevin Barry Room, the duo Wavetrain present the unusual combination of the early electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot (Nathalie Forget) and piano (Matthew Shellhorn) in a programme that includes works by Toru Takemitsu, Tristan Murail, Allain Gaussin and Olivier Messiaen. Wavetrain also play Sligo on November 19th, when the programme will include Siobhán Cleary's new The Whitening.
