FRIDAY 22
CLASSICAL New Ross Piano Festival
New Ross, Co Wexford Fri-Sun newrosspianofestival.com
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The flavour of this year's New Ross Piano Festival is Hungarian. That extends to the performers – who include Klára Würtz and Zoltán Fejérvári (piano), Kristóf Baráti (violin) and István Várdai (cello) – as well as the composers, who include Bartók, Liszt, and György Kurtág. Young Irish pianist Seán Morgan-Rooney also appears in a free coffee concert and talk with Hungarian musicologist Endre Tóth. Kristian Bezuidenhout gives the festival's first recital on an early piano, playing Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on a copy of an 1805 Viennese instrument by Anton Walter. The other performers are David Greilsammer and Elizaveta Ukrainskaia, both pianists, and viola player Jennifer Stumm. Michael Dervan
CLASSICAL Culture Night concerts
Various venues nationwide Adm free
Chamber Choir Ireland is using its Culture Night concert to present an adventurous programme of 20th- and 21st-century work under guest conductor Nils Schweckendiek. He's conducing pieces by Olivier Messiaen (Cinq rechants), Beat Furrer (enigmas I-IV & VI), Per Nørgård (Wie ein Kind) and Einojuhani Rautavaara (Suite de Lorca). The concert in St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, is at 6.30pm. Also in Dublin, at the NCH, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra is branching out by giving two concerts, at 7pm and 8.45pm, and making both of them free. The programmes are identical, with Grieg's Piano Concerto (soloist Paul Lewis) framed by Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and Matthew Hindson's Speed. Robert Trevino conducts. MD
WEDNESDAY 27
CLASSICAL Irish Chamber Orchestra/Gábor Takács-Nagy NCH Dublin 8pm €25/€22/€10 nch.ie Thurs, Cork; Fri, Limerick
Cork composer Sam Perkin's new 365 Variations on a Gesture gets its first outing from the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Gábor Takács-Nagy in Dublin. The piece is for solo percussionist (Alex Petcu) and Perkin says that the work "springs from a lifelong fascination with waves, one of the most important and fundamental phenomena in the universe". Over the course of a year he collected "365 pocket-sized variations, one each day, on this most elemental of gestures" and it's these waves that "form the building blocks for the overall architecture of the work". The piece is dedicated to "Physicist, percussionist and friend Alex Petcu, and The Irish Chamber Orchestra". Beyond his musical qualifications, Petcu also has a BSc and MSc in physics. The ICO present the new work in the context of pieces by Elgar (the Serenade for stings) and Brahms (the String Sextet in B flat, Op 18). MD
