Rté Philharmonic Choir, RTÉ Nso/Gerhard Markson NCH

Dublin Tonight 8pm €10-€35 01-4170000

BEETHOVEN: GENIUS, PASSION AND THE IRISH CONNECTION

Town Hall Theatre, Galway Fri-Sun 091-569777

VERONICA DUNNE INTERNATIONAL SINGING COMPETITION

NCH, Dublin Tonight/ tomorrow/Sun/Mon/Tues/ Thurs 01-4170000

NIKOLAI LUGANSKY (PIANO) NCH, Dublin Wed 8pm €20-€50 01-4170000

Gerhard Markson, principal conductor of the RTÉ NSO from 2001-09 (and principal guest conductor for four seasons before that) returns tonight for a programme of Berg and Beethoven. Isabelle van Keulen (left) is the soloist in Berg’s Violin Concerto, and the singers joining the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony are Katherine Broderick, Claudia Huckle, Robin Tritschler and Andrew Foster-Williams.

Beethoven is under the lens in Music for Galway’s three-day festival with soprano Charlotte Riedijk, tenor Robin Tritschler, clarinettist Paul Roe, pianists Simon Lepper and Rebecca Capova the Osiris Piano Trio.

Don’t expect much Beethoven at the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition at the NCH, where 80 singers from 30 countries vie to make it into Thursday’s finals with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Patrik Ringborg and take away the €10,000 top prize.

Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky is a competition veteran who took second prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1994, a year when no first prize was awarded. For his Dublin debut at the NCH, he’s offering a programme of Janacek, Liszt, Wagner arranged by Liszt, and Rachmaninov.