Classical Music | News, Interviews, Gigs, & More | The Irish Times

Quatuor Danel will play the 17 string quartets by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Photograph: Marco Borggreve

West Cork Chamber Music Festival doubles down for 2021

Artistic director Francis Humphrys is responding to Covid by adding more shows

Setting up a shot from Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust. Photograph: Kip Carroll

Get a musical fix with 20 Shots of Opera

Irish National Opera commissioned 20 short operas that were composed and quickly produced for video

On the 250th anniversary of his birth, what does Beethoven mean to people?

Beethoven: ‘Happy birthday, Maestro, and thank you for the beauty you have left us’

On the 250th anniversary of his birth, what does Beethoven mean to people and what are their favourite pieces?

Elain Agnew on being a composer in Ireland: “There could have been more pathways, more support, more opportunities.”

Elaine Agnew’s hopes still afloat for Paper Boat opera

Composer’s Galway 2020 community project postponed twice during pandemic

Chopin’s letters contain a ‘flood of declarations of love aimed at men’, sometimes direct in their erotic tone, according to Moritz Weber. Photograph: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Chopin’s interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims

Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer’s letters

Linda Buckley: From Ocean’s Floor review – Moodily dark soundtrack

The Kinsale composer’s work is dominated by morphings of electronic sounds

Ensemble Marsyas/Peter Whelan: Edinburgh 1742, Barsanti & Handel, Parte Seconda

Whelan’s airy, sprightly approach captures well the pleasurably frisky energy

NCH chair Maura McGrath says €8 million allocation from Budget 2021 to transfer the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under the remit of of the concert hall will “sustain symphonic music in Ireland”.

Tempo of change at NCH set to increase

Major redevelopment and Symphony Orchestra to be transferred under NCH remit

Singer Celine Byrne and pianist Rosetta Cucchi at the National Opera House in Wexford

Wexford opera, virtually: A bittersweet affair in Covid’s shadow

First-rate soloists and the Wexford Factory enliven binge-watching this year’s Wexford Festival Opera online, a Festival in the Air

Lisette Oropesa: “I’ll be in rehearsal and I’ll feel fine, I’ll feel like we’re back in old times. And then, for a split second, I’ll remember, oh, yeah, wait, this is 2020, there’s a virus out there.”

Lisette Oropesa: ‘I’m glad I wasn’t thrust into superstardom’

American soprano talks of Vienna audiences and opera in a time of pandemic precautions

Jörg Widmann, Denis Kozhukhin, Irish Chamber Orchestra: Weber review – glowing composer brought out of the shadows

Widmann makes a passionate plea for this brilliant but oft-neglected German composer

Paul Morley: “I now understood that I was in no position to save classical music.” Photograph: Kevin Cummins

Paul Morley: ‘I wanted to write about Mozart like the NME in 1980’

Cult pop conceptualist on post-punk mythmaking and his discovery of classical music

Tabea Debus: Ohrwurm review – tunes that will dance around in your head

The German recorder player explores how ‘earworms’ burrowed into European music

The members of the inaugural Wexford Factory, pictured in the National Opera House. The inaugural Wexford Factory, a professional development academy for young Irish/Irish-based singers began this week. Photograph: Mark Stedman

Wexford Factory performers at heart of this year’s Opera Festival productions

Singers will appear in Waiting for Shakespeare and Falstaff and more

Galway ConTempo Quartet: ‘For me, the pinnacle of the RTÉ residency was that we got the chance to do the Beethoven cycle and the Béla Bartók cycle around the country’

Contempo Quartet at 25: ‘I’d would like to think we are a little wiser’

The Galway ensemble, celebrating 25 years together, say they’ve learned from lockdown

Karen Power: Human nature review – A kind of magic carpet

Recordings have atmospheric vividness and rich spatialisation

Ronan Leahy and Naomi Louisa O’Connell in Irish National Opera’s Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy in association with Galway International Arts Festival in the Black Box Theatre. Photograph: Pat Redmond

Irish National Opera returning to stage after summer of shifting sands

Pandemic forced young company to revamp plans and find ways of performing online

John F Larchet’s Complete Songs and Airs: Musical comfort food

Review: Irish composer’s soft-edged songs are perfect for nostalgic reconnection

Sebastian Adams of Kirkos Ensemble: I was always drawn to trying to do weirder things

Kirkos Ensemble: Bringing a whole new meaning to ‘outsider’ music

The Biosphere Project is a sonic adventure outdoors, says co-director Sebastian Adams

Anakronos: The Red Book of Ossory review – Medieval eclecticism

Pure-voiced Caitríona O’Leary and friends draw on a range of medieval musical sources

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