Brahms: Sonatas Op 120 review – A redefined approach to musicAntoine Tamestit and Cédric Tiberghien play with individuality and intimacyFri Mar 05 2021 - 05:00
Ellen Jansson on discovering Fanny Mendelssohn: ‘It’s deeply personal’Clonmel’s Finding a Voice festival of music by women composers is going online this yearSat Feb 27 2021 - 05:00
Three Irish opera projects shortlisted for prestigious European prizeMichael Gallen’s Straymaker, Wexford Festival Opera and Irish National Opera make listMon Feb 22 2021 - 05:00
Relive: Live orchestral works that capture a time and placePieces by Jane O’Leary, Peter Dickson Lopez and Corrina Bonshek still resonateFri Feb 19 2021 - 05:00
Chiaroscuro Quartet: Haydn String Quartets Op 76 – magicians at workThe quartet achieves a well-nigh perfect balancing of parts that seems impossibleFri Feb 05 2021 - 05:00
Oculi Ensemble: Metamorphosen review – How Strauss shed his father’s influenceRichard Strauss went his own wild way, as this selection of chamber works showsFri Jan 22 2021 - 05:00
Finghin Collins: ‘Ireland has done extremely well for the arts online’The pianist on Music for Galway and working on his repertoire during lockdownMon Jan 18 2021 - 05:00
West Cork Chamber Music Festival doubles down for 2021Artistic director Francis Humphrys is responding to Covid by adding more showsThu Jan 14 2021 - 05:00
Swan Hennessy Selected Piano Works review – Mildly picturesqueThe Irish-American composer wore a range of musical hatsFri Jan 08 2021 - 05:00
Linda Catlin Smith: Meadow review – Deeply meditativeThe first in Louth Contemporary Music Society’s series of pandemic recordingsFri Dec 18 2020 - 05:00
Get a musical fix with 20 Shots of OperaIrish National Opera commissioned 20 short operas that were composed and quickly produced for videoSat Dec 12 2020 - 05:00
Elaine Agnew’s hopes still afloat for Paper Boat operaComposer’s Galway 2020 community project postponed twice during pandemicSat Dec 05 2020 - 05:00
Chamber Choir Ireland and Irish Chamber Orchestra: Letters review – Recording is extremely vividSinging and orchestral playing is on fireFri Dec 04 2020 - 05:00
Don’t sing so close to me: Choirs in the Covid eraOnce a communal activity, choral singing has been a high-risk one during the pandemicSat Nov 28 2020 - 05:00
Linda Buckley: From Ocean’s Floor review – Moodily dark soundtrackThe Kinsale composer’s work is dominated by morphings of electronic soundsFri Nov 20 2020 - 05:00
Ensemble Marsyas/Peter Whelan: Edinburgh 1742, Barsanti & Handel, Parte SecondaWhelan’s airy, sprightly approach captures well the pleasurably frisky energyFri Nov 06 2020 - 05:00
Tempo of change at NCH set to increaseMajor redevelopment and Symphony Orchestra to be transferred under NCH remitThu Oct 29 2020 - 05:00
Wexford opera, virtually: A bittersweet affair in Covid’s shadowFirst-rate soloists and the Wexford Factory enliven binge-watching this year’s Wexford Festival Opera online, a Festival in the AirTue Oct 20 2020 - 01:00
Lisette Oropesa: ‘I’m glad I wasn’t thrust into superstardom’American soprano talks of Vienna audiences and opera in a time of pandemic precautionsSat Oct 17 2020 - 05:00
Jörg Widmann, Denis Kozhukhin, Irish Chamber Orchestra: Weber review – glowing composer brought out of the shadowsWidmann makes a passionate plea for this brilliant but oft-neglected German composerFri Oct 16 2020 - 05:00
Tabea Debus: Ohrwurm review – tunes that will dance around in your headThe German recorder player explores how ‘earworms’ burrowed into European musicFri Oct 02 2020 - 05:00
Wexford Factory performers at heart of this year’s Opera Festival productionsSingers will appear in Waiting for Shakespeare and Falstaff and moreThu Sept 24 2020 - 05:00
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 lockdownMon Sept 21 2020 - 05:00
Karen Power: Human nature review – A kind of magic carpetRecordings have atmospheric vividness and rich spatialisationFri Sept 18 2020 - 05:00
Irish National Opera returning to stage after summer of shifting sandsPandemic forced young company to revamp plans and find ways of performing onlineThu Sept 17 2020 - 05:00
John F Larchet’s Complete Songs and Airs: Musical comfort foodReview: Irish composer’s soft-edged songs are perfect for nostalgic reconnectionFri Sept 04 2020 - 05:00
Kirkos Ensemble: Bringing a whole new meaning to ‘outsider’ musicThe Biosphere Project is a sonic adventure outdoors, says co-director Sebastian AdamsMon Aug 31 2020 - 05:00
Anakronos: The Red Book of Ossory review – Medieval eclecticismPure-voiced Caitríona O’Leary and friends draw on a range of medieval musical sourcesFri Aug 21 2020 - 05:00
Andrew Hamilton: Joy review – Charting direct line to beginningsSix works on album sounds disarmingly home-spunFri Aug 07 2020 - 05:00
Jörg Widmann: Conductor of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, trying to fill the spaceEnergetic German talks lockdown listening, mooching through Munich and pining for crowdsSat Jul 25 2020 - 05:00
Wexford Festival Opera goes online in series of free performancesWaiting for Shakespear...The Festival in the Air is an eight-day online celebrationThu Jul 16 2020 - 00:00
Sharon Carty, Jonathan Ware: Schubert’s Four Seasons reviewAn unhackneyed Schubertian journey through the cycles of the yearFri Jul 03 2020 - 05:00
‘This is such a terrible mess. But I feel the power of what we do more vividly than ever’This year's Edinburgh festival is off – but only postponed, says its Irish head, Fergus LinehanThu Jul 02 2020 - 05:00
The show must go on: Making opera in the lockdown ageCovid-19 restrictions did not stop INO from creating Seraglio - an upcoming mini-seriesMon Jun 29 2020 - 05:00
Remote music teaching: ‘We have to do it. We have to find ways’Using online communication as substitute for the traditional face-to-face music lesson is a complicated undertakingSat Jun 20 2020 - 05:00
Financial control will add to the security of Wexford Festival OperaEffective controls on artistic expenditure appear to have been nonexistentMon Jun 08 2020 - 05:00
Irish-American composer Swan Hennessy written into historyHibernophile musicologist Axel Klein has had to use detective work to fill in the blanksWed May 27 2020 - 05:00
Can live music and theatre return with social distancing?Michael Dervan: Reducing numbers at concerts will be very tough on box officesWed May 20 2020 - 05:00
Live music facing an uncertain future – nothing new thereToday it’s a pandemic. A century ago it was the advent of radio, the talkies and muzakWed May 13 2020 - 05:00
How are composers affected by lockdowns, wars and revolutions?From Stravinsky to Schoenberg, composers differed in their treatment of global events in the 20th centuryWed May 06 2020 - 05:00
When will concerts be on again? When people feel safe to goWith most summer events cancelled, the picture for autumn is looking a lot less clearWed Apr 29 2020 - 05:00
Irish artists are not helped by cloud-cuckoo-land responses to the Covid-19 crisisMichael Dervan: Contemporary Music Centre’s list of unrealistic demands is shamefulWed Apr 22 2020 - 05:00
Arts Council’s €1m Covid-19 package amounts to a pittance for artistsYou have to wonder what the Government’s cultural mandarins are actually thinkingWed Apr 15 2020 - 05:00
Three Irish classical musicians on the impact of the global shutdownCancelled events have hit Jonny Byers, Peter Whelan and Tara Erraught hardWed Apr 08 2020 - 05:00
Polish avant-garde composer who had the common touchKrzysztof Penderecki had a remarkable career, but was most proud of his arboretumWed Apr 01 2020 - 05:00
Feis Ceoil the biggest loss to Irish classical calendarCoronavirus ravages cultural schedule but online musical archives will reward raidingWed Mar 25 2020 - 05:00
The show must go online: How venues are keeping the music aliveCovid-19 has shut concert halls and productions, but you can watch safely on the webWed Mar 18 2020 - 05:00
High sound levels a health risk in classical musicNumerous composers suffer from tinnitus and even violinists tend to end up with hearing damage in the left earWed Mar 11 2020 - 05:00
Bach in season: This week’s classical music highlightsNCH hosts concerts by Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki and Malcolm ProudSat Mar 07 2020 - 05:00
