Spirit-lifting experiences, enriching undertaking

THERE have been quite a few changes at or near the top of major music or music-related organisations during the last year. DGOS Opera Ireland lost one artistic director, Dorothea Glatt, and announced the arrival of another, Dieter Kaegi; the company also lost part of its name (the DGOS bit). After the decade-long tenure of Kenneth Montgomery, Opera Northern Ireland found a new artistic director in Stephen Barlow. Also in Belfast, the Ulster Orchestra has followed the artistically uneven En Shao with a principal conductor of high musical pedigree, Dmitry Sitkovetsky.

The Belfast Festival has appointed a new programme director, Sean Doran, whose background is heavily musical, and the new director of the Arts Council in Dublin, Patricia Quinn, began her career in arts administration as the council's music and opera officer.

One of the Arts Council's brightest musical moves of recent years has proved to be its increased support for the Limerick-based Irish Chamber Orchestra. With its core strength extended to 16 string players this year, the ICO is sounding better than ever, a real credit to its management and the leadership of its artistic director, Fionnuala Hunt. The orchestra's commitment to work by Irish composers is also setting new standards for other Irish orchestras to measure themselves by.

It's long been held that the standard of an orchestra can be accurately gauged by the standard of the chamber ensembles it spawns. The ICO has already started delivery in this area, where the Hibernia String Trio (Brona Cahill, Joachim Roewer and Richard Jenkinson) has marked itself out as a most welcome new arrival.

Staying with string playing, the young violinist Catherine Leonard has been picking up prizes at international competitions (a rare achievement for an Irish violinist), and gave an enjoyable recital at the RDS in February. The RDS was also the venue for the year's most remarkable string recital, by the British cellist Steven Isserlis, in an evening of solo pieces by Bach and Tavener. The year's other notable visitors included Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov, genuinely refreshing in Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra in January, the irrepressible Budapest Wind Ensemble at DCU in February, and the English tenor John Elwes (whose father was Irish) at the Sligo Early Music Festival in May.

As for a "Musician of the Year", I haven't been able to make my mind up between two men we'll be hearing a lot more of. Alexander Anissimov, the new principal guest conductor of the NSO, has offered spirit-lifting experiences at all of his concerts to date. And, some, early orchestral hiccups notwithstanding, Hugh Tinney's three-year Mozart piano concerto cycle with the Orchestra of St Cecilia is also shaping up as a most enriching undertaking.