NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
2024 — 2025 SEASON
PIANO CONCERTOS
National Symphony Orchestra
CHOPIN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2
Yeol Eum Son piano
Friday 13 December 2024
‘Extraordinary, immensely impressive’ (Get the Chance)
RACHMANINOV PIANO
CONCERTO NO. 2
Lise de la Salle piano
Friday 17 January 2025
‘Wonderfully gifted’ (Gramophone)
BRAHMS PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1
Jonathan Biss piano
Friday 28 March 2025
‘An eloquent interpreter with a powerful technique’ (New York Times)
Tickets from €15 nch.ie
National Symphony Orchestra
Dinis Sousa conductor
Louis Schwizgebel piano
Friday 4 October 2024, 7.30pm
National Concert Hall
Presented by Paul Herriott, RTÉ lyric fm Programme
Anna Clyne Masquerade / 5’
Grieg Piano Concerto / 31’ Elgar Enigma Variations / 31’
Broadcast live on RTÉ lyric Live on RTÉ lyric fm
PLEASE NOTE: The NCH does not permit photography or videography during the performance (without prior permission). We kindly ask you to refrain from using any recording equipment for the duration of tonight’s performance.
NCH Board Members
Maura McGrath Chair | James Cavanagh | Cliona Doris
Rebecca Gageby | Hilary Hough | Peter McKenna
Niamh Murray | Michelle O’Sullivan | Don Thornhill
Patron
Michael D. Higgins President of Ireland
Festivities and friends
A note from Dinis Sousa
Tonight’s concert is a really festive programme and we’re playing some of the most celebrated pieces of music from the orchestral repertoire. If you’re not familiar with them, you’ll soon understand why they are so popular. Both the Grieg and the Elgar are incredibly emotional pieces but also thrilling to listen to – and to perform. Elgar wrote his Enigma Variations as a dedication to many of his friends and acquaintances, with each variation a sort of tribute to one of them. There are 14 variations and each of them is so different from the previous one, some as short as 30 seconds, others expansive like the most famous, ‘Nimrod’. It’s a rollercoaster, especially as he ramps it up towards the end with constant up-and-down, push-and-pull motions that feel almost physical. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.
I’m really happy to work with the National Symphony Orchestra for the first time and to make my Irish debut alongside pianist Louis Schwizgebel who is not only a great pianist but also a wonderful person. We have only worked together once before and we had such a great time, so I’ve been looking forward to working with him on this programme for many months.
We open the programme with Anna Clyne’s Masquerade, an incredibly vivid and energetic piece that Anna wrote for the Last Night of the Proms, and I hope you’ll agree that the festive tone of the piece is a great way to start the programme. Have a great concert.
Dinis Sousa
Programme Notes
Anna Clyne (b.1980)
Masquerade
Masquerade draws inspiration from the original mid-18th century promenade concerts held in London’s pleasure gardens. As is true today, these concerts were a place where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide array of music. Other forms of entertainment ranged from the sedate to the salacious with acrobatics, exotic street entertainers, dancers, fireworks and masquerades. I am fascinated by the historic and sociological courtship between music and dance. Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. It is this that I wish to evoke in Masquerade. The work derives its material from two melodies. For the main theme, I imagined a chorus welcoming the audience and inviting them into their imaginary world. The second theme, ‘Juice of Barley’, is an old English country dance melody and drinking song, which first appeared in John Playford’s 1695 edition of The English Dancing Master.
Anna Clyne
Reproduced by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes on behalf of the composer
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
I. Allegro molto moderato
II. Adagio
III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato – Quasi presto – Andante maestoso
From one perspective – the brute consideration of scale – Grieg’s A minor Piano Concerto is an aberration. It is his sole concerto (a second exists only in fragments) and one of his comparatively few pieces for orchestra that include the Holberg and twin Peer Gynt Suites.
Himself an accomplished pianist, Grieg was a miniaturist at heart and the piano his canvas. Not for nothing is he sometimes referred to as the Chopin of the
North. More apposite is the claim to his being the father of Norwegian classical music. A century and more after his death in 1907, he remains Norway’s most prominent composer and stands alongside Scandinavian peers such as Sibelius and Dvorˇák as a pioneer in assimilating long established folk idioms in their own music. (Indeed, the Piano Concerto’s memorable opening section is based on intervals directly borrowed from Norwegian folk music.)
The Piano Concerto was composed in the summer of 1868, just as Grieg reached his 24th birthday, and revised repeatedly until the year of his death in 1907. An opportunity to display his own virtuosic dexterity at the keyboard, it is a commanding early work driven along by forceful, youthful impetuosity and lit up by striking details in both the piano and orchestral lines that speak of a maturity far beyond the composer’s then callow years.
Despite Grieg’s youth, the concerto delves deep into his soul in music whose bewitching melancholy is matched by its blazing virtuosity. Evidence of the latter is vigorously apparent in the strident exclamation mark of the opening, built on intervals strongly reminiscent of Norwegian folk music in which rolling timpani are abruptly halted by clipped brass and over-reached by some of the most familiar piano chords in the repertoire. (Surely no other piano concerto, except perhaps Tchaikovsky’s Second, begins so memorably?)
Incidentally, the concerto shares a kinship with Robert Schumann’s sole attempt at the form (also in A minor) that Grieg had heard in a performance by the composer’s wife, Clara, a decade earlier.
The declamatory stridency of the opening aside, the first movement is characterised by the ebb and flow of mellow warmth and melancholic chill. A languid theme in woodwinds is readily taken up by the piano before massed cellos introduce the elegantly refined second theme. This the piano devours with rapacious appetite, transforming it into something altogether bolder and with enough muscularity to prompt the orchestra to take it up in full flow. Both themes are repeated in transfigured form, the movement ending with thrilling cadenza for the piano.
The brief second movement, framed and cosseted by muted strings, delivers up one of Grieg’s most beautiful melodies, the piano rippling like starlight sparkling and twinkling behind passing clouds.
The finale follows immediately, announcing itself with a spirited brio that owes something to the traditional Norwegian halling folk dance probably derived from the Scottish reel. Grieg casts one last lingering look inwards in a new wistfully tender theme introduced by flute and taken up by piano before the concerto concludes with a thrilling declaration by piano and orchestra in exultant union.
Aside from its immovable place in the repertoire, Grieg’s Piano Concerto also has a small place in recording history, being the first such work to be committed to disc when Wilhelm Backhaus issued a much-abridged version (just six minutes in length) in 1909.
Michael Quinn © National Concert Hall
INTERVAL
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’, Op. 36
Theme
Variation I: ‘C.A.E.’
Variation II: ‘H.D.S-P.’
Variation III: ‘R.B.T.’
Variation IV: ‘W.M.B.’
Variation V: ‘R.P.A.’
Variation VI: ‘Ysobel’
Variation VII: ‘Troyte’
Variation VIII: ‘W.N.’
Variation IX: ‘Nimrod’
Variation X: Intermezzo ‘Dorabella’
Variation XI: ‘G.R.S.’
Variation XII: ‘B.G.N.’
Variation XIII: Romanza ‘***’
Variation XIV: Finale ‘E.D.U.’
After a decade spent languishing on the fringes of England’s increasingly confident and buoyant musical scene as the composer of politely admired choral works, Edward Elgar had begun to despair of ever receiving the recognition (and financial reward) he felt his music deserved.
As late as 1898 his despondency was threatening to overwhelm him. ‘I am’, he confessed to a friend, ‘very sick at heart over music’. Yet within a matter of months his fortunes were transformed, his reputation as the Edwardian age’s musical laureate secured. The premieres of the Enigma Variations in 1899, The Dream of Gerontius the following year and the first of his Pomp and Circumstance marches in 1901 transformed his standing and placed him at the very heart of the British musical establishment. Proof of such came with his knighthood just three years later.
The Enigma Variations was Elgar’s most ambitious orchestral work to date. First performed in London in June 1899, it takes the form of a series of musical impressions conceived as a set of 14 Variations on an Original Theme (as Elgar’s original title had it). Dedicated to ‘my friends pictured within’, it concludes with a final variation depicting the composer himself.
Why he gave it the title Enigma remains a riddle. Elgar resolutely refused to explain, insisting instead that ‘Its “dark saying” must be left unguessed... the chief character never on stage’. More gnomically, he added: ‘through and over the whole set another and larger theme “goes”, but is not played... the principal Theme never appears’.
The conundrum at the music’s heart continues to preoccupy scholars, the most recent theory – allying Elgar’s anonymous theme to the opening of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater of 1736 – attracting headlines as recently as 2019. Earlier ‘solutions’ suggest connections to the British national anthem, the popular Scottish Hogmanay song Auld Lang Syne and Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata. All –and yet none – seem wholly persuasive, the mystery at the Enigma Variations ’ indecipherable core remaining to add piquancy to its abiding poetry.
It begins in a mood of searching introspection with the G minor Theme on which the succeeding variations will be built, the immediate inversion of its opening bar – a sequence of two short and two long notes – and constant shifting between minor and major key hinting at currents stirring but yet to be felt beneath the music’s surface.
What can be said about the Enigma Variations is that they are forged from and with love, the lyrical Variation I dedicated to ‘C.A.E.’, the composer’s wife of 10 years, Caroline Alice Elgar – ‘one whose life’, the composer declared, ‘was a romantic and delicate inspiration’.
The ‘H.D.S-P.’ remembered in Variation II is Hew David Steuart-Powell, an amateur pianist with whom Elgar often played in a trio alongside the cellist Basil George Nevinson. Parodying his friend’s pre-performance warming-up exercises, it playfully roots itself in a chromatic language designed, with tongue firmly in cheek, to gently lampoon his keyboard colleague.
Another amateur, this time the Oxford don and actor-manqué, Richard Baxter Townshend, is memorialised in Variation III, a sprightly allegretto that mimics the theatrical antics of ‘R.B.T.’ on stage as an old man.
There’s a comic edge, too, to the rumbustiously succinct Variation IV – the shortest of all the variations – a blustery brass- and percussion-led depiction of Townshend’s brother-in-law ‘W.M.B.’ (William Meath Baker), a Gloucestershire squire renowned for slamming doors behind him as he vacated rooms.
Variation V’s ‘R.P.A.’ was Richard P. Arnold, son of the poet Matthew Arnold, whose pianistic abilities Elgar much admired, not least for ‘evading difficulties but suggesting in a mysterious way the real feeling’ of pieces he played. It leads, without pause, into Variation VI. Dedicated to ‘Ysobel’ (in reality Elgar’s viola student, Isabel Fitton) it both teases and tributes his pupil, the challenging crossing from fourth to second string of the viola it demands in its opening statement followed by a warmly affectionate aside.
The bracing presto ‘Troyte’ (Variation VII) pays homage to Elgar’s friend, the architect Arthur Troyte Griffith, its bustling energy owing something to Griffith’s blundering technique at the piano and to a thunderstorm the pair were once forced to take refuge from.
And after the storm, the tranquillity of Variation VIII, ‘W.N.’ – Winifred Norbury, whose signature laugh can be heard within the graceful depiction of the 18thcentury house she owned.
The Enigma’s most familiar passage, the sombre but noble adagio of Variation IX that carries the title ‘Nimrod’, is a heartfelt tribute to Elgar’s trusted publisher, Augustus J. Jaeger. The title puns Jaeger’s surname with the German word for ‘hunter’, its opening bars discretely alluding to a theme in the Pathétique Sonata by Beethoven, whose music both men revered.
Dedicated to Dora Penny, an earlier claimant for the bachelor Elgar’s affections, ‘Dorabella’ (Variation X) is a bright, summer-breeze of a piece, delicately pastoral, unabashedly poetic and effusively affectionate as young love usually is.
The briskly accelerated Variation XI, ‘G.R.S.’ refers to the Hereford Cathedral organist George Robertson Sinclair, although, in truth, it is his ebullient bulldog, Dan, caught here in animated musical aspic as he tumbles down a bank into, and scrambles triumphantly out of, the River Wye, that is remembered here.
Variation XII, ‘B.G.N.’, is a heartfelt commemoration of the amateur cellist Basil George Nevinson – remembered by Elgar as ‘a serious and devoted friend’ –appropriately bookended by an evocative passage in solo cello.
Additional intrigue was injected late into the Enigma Variations by the dedication of Variation XIII to ‘***’, whose identity remains uncertain save for Elgar’s admission that ‘the asterisks take the place of the name of a lady who was, at
the time of composition, on a sea voyage’. A quotation from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in clarinet underlines the nautical connection. The obvious affection and pensive ‘what might have been’ quality of the piece suggests the likely dedicatee was Helen Weaver, who had broken off her engagement to the composer in 1884 immediately prior to emigrating to New Zealand.
The work concludes with a self-portrait in Variation XIV, ‘E.D.U.’, a reference to Elgar’s wife’s pet name for the composer, ‘Edu’ (a diminution of the German Eduard). Tellingly, it weaves themes from two earlier variations – ‘C.A.E.’ and ‘Nimrod’ – into a boisterous, self-confident statement that suggests a recognition of his emotional and creative debts to both. Ending in a blaze of orchestral colour and energy, it reveals Elgar not at his most enigmatic, but, contrarily, at his most explicit in a stirring testament to love and friendship and the fortune they bring.
Notes by Michael Quinn © National Concert Hall
Dinis Sousa conductor
Dinis Sousa is Principal Conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia (RNS), Associate Conductor of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras (MCO), and Founding Artistic Director of Orquestra XXI, an award-winning orchestra bringing together young Portuguese musicians living abroad.
With the RNS in 2023-2024 he embarked upon a cycle of Robert Schumann’s symphonies at The Glasshouse, Gateshead, in addition to Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri which received a five-star review from The Times . RNS highlights this season included a world premiere by Cassandra Miller, a UK tour, and a return to the BBC Proms. Recent and upcoming seasons include collaborations with Víkingur Ólafsson, Christian Tetzlaff, Steven Isserlis, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Benjamin Grosvenor and, in a community-participation performance of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, and Willard White.
Sousa’s MCO work has earned critical acclaim, most recently for a Beethoven symphony cycle in London and Paris in May 2024, described by Operalogue as ‘an unforgettable performance of inexorable, Promethean momentum’. He won widespread praise for Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Salzburg Festival, Berlin Musikfest and BBC Proms in 2023, The Guardian noting: ‘Sousa was electrifying in moments of grandeur, high drama, and emotional intensity’. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2023 conducting the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.
As a guest conductor, Sousa made debuts this season with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Swedish Radio Symphony. In 2024-2025, he will debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Operatic experience includes Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In 2025 he will lead a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte for Graz Opera.
With Orquestra XXI, recent highlights have included opening the Gulbenkian Foundation’s season, and a critically acclaimed tour of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 celebrating the orchestra’s tenth anniversary. In recognition of his work with Orquestra XXI, he was made a Knight of the Order of Prince Henry in Portugal.
Louis Schwizgebel piano
Louis Schwizgebel has been described as ‘a genuine virtuoso, a spirited young genius with real depth’ (Fono Forum) and an ‘insightful musician’ (New York Times). He is praised repeatedly for his poise, elegance, imagination, expressive lyricism and crystalline articulation. He performs regularly in recital and with the finest orchestras across the globe and has received critical acclaim for his recordings.
Recent and future concert highlights include performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National Symphony, Oxford Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Oslo Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Vienna Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Utah Symphony, Oregon Symphony, São Paulo Symphony and Auckland Philharmonia.
In solo recital and chamber music, Schwizgebel performs regularly at the major festivals and halls including London’s Wigmore, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Rheingau Festival, Verbier Festival, Lucerne Festival and BBC Proms. Schwizgebel has worked with a wide range of conductors including Edward Gardner, Mirga Gražinyte˙-Tyla, Nicholas Collon, Thierry Fischer, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski, Fabio Luisi, Lahav Shani, Robin Ticciati, John Wilson, James Gaffigan, SanttuMatias Rouvali, Ben Gernon, Elim Chan, Michael Sanderling, Vasily Petrenko and Fabien Gabel.
Schwizgebel records for Aparté and his latest recording of Schubert Sonatas D845 and D958 was described as an ‘album of extraordinary precision’ by Le Figaro. Previous releases include Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 5 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Schwizgebel was born in 1987 in Geneva. He studied with Brigitte Meyer in Lausanne and Pascal Devoyon in Berlin, and then later at the Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax and Robert McDonald, and at London’s Royal Academy of Music with Pascal Nemirovski. At the age of 17 he won the Geneva International Music Competition and, two years later, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. In 2012 he won second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, and in 2013 he became a BBC New Generation Artist.
Meet The Orchestra
Get to know the people behind the instruments of the National Symphony Orchestra
Hilary Sheil Principal Contrabassoon
When did you join the National Symphony Orchestra? 1997.
What do you enjoy most about being in the NSO?
I’m really grateful to have lovely colleagues. This music is a real team effort. They make it easier because they are so supportive, and we have a good laugh too.
Why did you choose to play your instrument?
I always liked the sound of wind instruments. They all have their own character but I Ioved the sound of the bassoon the most.
Tell us your favourite NSO story/memory so far. One of my favourite and funniest memories was when we toured to Germany. We started in Denmark and got a ferry to north Germany. However as the announcements were in Danish, we nearly missed our stop and two orchestra members were left on board and ended up going back to Denmark. We found an Irish pub and waited for them there!
Who is your favourite composer and what is your favourite work?
That’s a difficult question but I really like playing all the Russian composers –Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev ballets, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich – all amazing.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you most like to be?
I think if I wasn’t a musician I would like to be an artist, especially a print maker. My Dad was an artist and I grew up seeing him making woodcuts, etchings and paintings.
What is an achievement you are proud of – musical or otherwise?
Last year I ran a half-marathon and I never believed that I would ever do that. I even enjoyed it.
What is the best piece of advice you ever received – either musical or in general? Enjoy the journey. It is important to be grateful and not be wishing life away!
National Symphony Orchestra
The National Symphony Orchestra has been at the centre of Ireland’s cultural life for over 75 years. Formerly the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, it was founded in 1948 as the Raidió Éireann Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, the Orchestra transferred from RTÉ to the remit of the National Concert Hall.
Resident orchestra of the National Concert Hall since its opening in 1981, it is a leading force in Irish musical life through year-long programmes of live music – ranging from symphonic, choral and operatic to music from stage and screen, popular and traditional music, and new commissions – alongside recordings, broadcasts on RTÉ and internationally through the European Broadcasting Union. Schools concerts, family events, initiatives for emerging artists and composers, collaborations with partner promoters and organisations extend the orchestra’s reach.
As a central part of the National Concert Hall’s 2024-2025 Season, the NSO presents more than 55 performances shared between Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork. They include collaborations with international and Irish artists, ensembles and conductors – including a number of events with the National Concert Hall’s Artists-in-Residence: the renowned American musician and composer Bryce Dessner, the internationally acclaimed Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, and the dynamic musician and presenter Jessie Grimes. The programme is rich and varied, presenting repertoire from across the centuries to the present day including world and Irish premieres, choral masterpieces, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family concerts and screenings, schools concerts, and professional initiatives for emerging singers and composers. A focus on nature and the environment is a central part of the season’s programming.
Highlights with the Artists-in-Residence are many. They include three Irish premieres by Bryce Dessner: Mari , his Violin Concerto performed by its dedicatee, Pekka Kuusisto, and his Concerto for Two Pianos performed by Katia and Marielle Labèque, for whom it was written. Tara Erraught performs virtuosic works by Mozart, Haydn and Marianne von Martínez, with historical performance specialist Laurence Cummings conducting, and arias by Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, with Clelia Cafiero conducting. Tara is also the driving
force behind Celebrating the Voice, a week-long professional development programme for young singers which culminates in an opera gala with the NSO conducted by Anu Tali. Jessie Grimes leads immersive, family-friendly concerts including Our Precious Planet and explorations of iconic works: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as part of the ASD-friendly Symphony Shorts, as well as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, featuring new and specially commissioned shadow puppetry, and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
Other exciting highlights include Dame Sarah Connolly joining conductor Mihhail Gerts for Alma Mahler’s Six Songs; an 80th birthday celebration for conductor Leonard Slatkin which includes the world premiere of his son Daniel’s cosmic journey, Voyager 130 ; Hugh Tinney performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto; Speranza Scappucci conducting a Ravel Birthday Celebration; John Storgårds conducting Rachmaninov and Shostakovich; Anja Bihlmaier conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; and Ryan McAdams conducting the First Violin Concerto by Philip Glass with NSO Leader Elaine Clark as soloist; and John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean. Jaime Martín returns to conduct Chopin’s Second Concerto with Yeol Eum Son as the soloist, and former Principal Conductor Gerhard Markson returns for Stanford’s Requiem featuring the National Symphony Chorus and soloists including Máire Flavin and Sharon Carty.
World premieres by Deirdre McKay and Ailís Ní Ríain and, as part of Composer Lab, by Amelia Clarkson, Finola Merivale, Barry O’Halpin, and Yue Song all feature. Irish premieres include a new orchestral setting of Philip Glass’s film score Naqoyqatsi with the Philip Glass Ensemble; Stephen McNeff’s The Celestial Stranger with Gavan Ring as soloist; James MacMillan’s St. John Passion with the National Symphony Chorus and Chamber Choir Ireland; and Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá’s Third Symphony.
Additional family events include popular screenings of classic children’s stories by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – Stick Man and The Snail and the Whale – and Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes . Music in the Classroom returns with Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate Music Guide events, and Musical Adventures for Primary School children.
National Symphony Orchestra
1st Violin
Elaine Clark •
Jens Lynen
Sebastian Liebig †
Orla Ní Bhraoin °
Catherine McCarthy
Ting Zhong Deng
Anne Harte
Bróna Fitzgerald
Claudie Driesen
Karl Sweeney
Hannah Choi
Susanna Poole
Nasenbilige Ta
Niamh McGowan
2nd Violin
Nicholas Rippon
Elizabeth McLaren ‡
Joanne Fleming Campbell °
Rosalind Brown
Paul Fanning
Dara O’Connell
Melanie Cull
Evelyn McGrory
Elena Quinn
Magda Kowalska
Matthew Wylie
Nicola Cleary
Viola
Matthew Maguire
Francis Harte °
Ruth Bebb
Neil Martin
Cliona O’Riordan
Nathan Sherman
Anthony Mulholland
Carla Vedres
Róisín Ní Dhúill
Samantha Hutchins
Cello
Polly Ballard ‡
Violetta-Valerie Muth °
Matthew Lowe
Úna Ní Chanainn
Filip Szkopek
Maria Kolby-Sonstad
David McCann
Anne Murnaghan
Double Bass
Mark O’Leary
Mark Jenkins ‡
Anthony Williams
Waldemar Kozak
Helen Morgan
Jenni Meade
Alex Felle
Flute
Catriona Ryan •
Ríona Ó Duinnín ‡
Piccolo
Sinéad Farrell †
Oboe
Matthew Manning •
Sylvain Gnemmi ‡
Cor Anglais
Deborah Clifford †
Clarinet
Emídio André Costa
Deirdre O’Leary
Bass Clarinet
Fintan Sutton †
Bassoon
Greg Crowley •
Emma Simpson
Contra Bassoon
Hilary Sheil †
Horn
Mark Smith
Peter Ryan
Bethan Watkeys †
David Atcheler ◊
Dewi Jones
Trumpet
Holly Clark
Sam Lewis
Pamela Stainer
Trombone
Jason Sinclair •
Gavin Roche ‡
Bass Trombone
Josiah Walters †
Tuba
Francis Magee •
Timpani
Niels Verbeek
Percussion
Bernard Reilly ◊
Caitriona Frost
Brian Dungan
Kevin Corcoran
Harp
Andreja Malir •
Organ
Fergal Caulfield
• Section Leader
* Section Principal
† Principal
‡ Associate Principal
° String Sub Principal
◊ Sub Principal 1
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NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
2024 — 2025 SEASON
INTERNATIONAL ORCHESTRAS AND RECITALS
SATURDAY 30
NOVEMBER 2024
7.30PM
PARAORCHESTRA
Charles Hazlewood conductor Victoria Oruwari soprano
The pioneering ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians, with guest soprano Victoria Oruwari, led by Charles Hazlewood perform Górecki’s cathartic and hauntingly beautiful work Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , preceded by Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a melancholic, iridescent and urgent piece realised for full string orchestra by Mahler.
Pre-concert talk 6.15pm-7pm
Tickets from €15
Discounts and Packages Available nch.ie