St Nicholas Collegiate Church, Galway Thurs 8pm €20, €25 01-4434522; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin Sat 19th 8pm €25 01-4434522
“Young Prodigy, Old Master” is the billing the Irish Baroque Orchestra has given its next concerts in Galway and Dublin.
The young prodigy is Mozart, who was 18 when he wrote his Bassoon Concerto, and all of 10 when he composed his Galimathias musicum. (Galimathias is a German word that translates as nonsense or balderdash.)
Haydn turned 40 in 1772, so he wasn't really that old in the mid 1770s when he wrote the symphony we now know as Il distratto. The material came from incidental music he had written for a French play ( Le Distraitby Jean François Regnard) which was performed in German (as Der Zerstreute). But, since Haydn's score carries its inscription in Italian, the symphony has come to be known with an Italian title.
The IBO’s plan seems to be to draw connections between nonsense and absent- mindedness. The soloist in the Bassoon Concerto is the excellent Peter Whelan.
