Dawn Upshaw

DAWN UPSHAW (SOPRANO), KNIGHTS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA/ERIC JACOBSENNational Gallery, Dublin Sat 7pm €60 01-6633518 BORIS BEREZOVSKY…

DAWN UPSHAW (SOPRANO), KNIGHTS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA/ERIC JACOBSENNational Gallery, Dublin Sat 7pm €60 01-6633518 BORIS BEREZOVSKY (PIANO) NCH, Dublin Sat 8pm €15-€45 01-4170000 NIKOLAI DEMIDENKO (PIANO), PRAGUE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/LIBOR PESEK NCH, Dublin Mon 8pm €40-€80 01-4170000

There's no shortage of choice as the current concert season comes to an end. Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky returns to the National Concert Hall on Saturday for a programme that includes some of Liszt's Transcendental Studies, three of Godowsky's amazing complicated reworkings of Chopin Studies, and Rachmaninov's rarely-heard First Sonata. Nikolai Demidenko plays Chopin's First Piano Concertowith the Prague Symphony Orchestra under Libor Pesek in an otherwise Czech programme (Dvorak's Carnival Overture and New World Symphony) on Monday.

But pride of place must go to the Irish début of US soprano Dawn Upshaw, whose captivatingly beautiful voice helped Górecki's Third Symphonybecome a bestseller in the early 1990s. She's performing in the National Gallery's Music for Museums series on Saturday (a 7pm start), when she'll perform works by Golijov, Bernstein, Rodgers and Sondheim.

Also in the programme, with the Knights Chamber Orchestra under Eric Jacobsen, are works by Bach, Philip Glass and Aaron Copland, as well as a set by Knights member Christina Courtin, a singer-songwriter who’s been compared to Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor