Bruch, Corelli, Faure, Kabalevsky and . . . Bollinger (perhaps?) are about to be savoured. The finalists in a competition for the Charles and Carol Acton Travel Bursary are ready to perform in the Organ Room of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. It is time to break out the champagne and celebrate the presentation of the inaugural bursary to the winning musician. Think cello. It is the "in" instrument. Three of the four finalists are to perform on cello, and their teacher, Londoner Bill Butt, (think Robert Downey Jr in the looks department) is here to listen and enjoy. He's as calm as a . . . a, a carpet of crushed rose petals in a country churchyard. In other words, he's not nervous at all, at all. But waiting outside with nerves of steel are the music performance undergraduate finalists themselves: Eoin Quinlan, Kate Ellis, Niamh Molloy, and Kate Hearne on recorder - she also plays the cello, but not tonight.
Hearne ultimately wins the bursary, which commemorates the late Charles Acton - governor of the academy for 44 years as well as music critic of this newspaper for 32 years - and his wife, Carol Acton, who is here to make the presentation. She is welcomed back to her alma mater by RIAM director John O'Conor. The index-linked bursary will be awarded annually for the next 10 years to the most outstanding music student.
RIAM governor and music critic Richard Pine, who is one of the judges at the final, says they will be looking for "musical intelligence" and "people who know what they want to do with their lives and how they are going to achieve that". It is intended that the bursary, which represents approximately £2,000 this year, will enable the winning student to travel and gain in musical experience.
"Brilliance - in a word," is what they are looking for, adds Seamus Crimmins, head of Lyric FM, who is pleased with the results of the JNLR survey, which found that the station gets an average 100,000 listeners every day.
Others spotted in the audience are Dan Breen, a former Army Band percussion player and his wife, Norah Breen; Patricia Kavanagh, RIAM head of keyboard studies and Anne Molloy with her mother, Katheine Kerr, from Malahide. As the night closes, the notes of Castello, Khachaturian, Fulton and . . . for some, tequila . . . come back to haunt us. It is a memorable night. Vivace, not to mention molto allegro e energico.