Hugh Tinney, Graham Hastings, RTÉ NSO/Dmitri Jurowski

NCH, Dublin Tonight 8pm €10-€35 01-4170000

NCH, Dublin Tonight 8pm €10-€35 01-4170000

Composer David Fennessy, a Glasgow-based Dubliner, has done very well without anyone in Ireland taking much notice of his achievement. Last year, for instance, saw him partake in an international project involving Ensemble Modern and the Siemens Arts Program in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. He was one of five composers (the others were Unsuk Chin, Heiner Goebbels, Benedict Mason and Johannes Schöllhorn) who spent several weeks in the delta of China’s Pearl River “attempting to approach the region in musical terms”. The results were performed at concerts in Berlin and Frankfurt. Fennessy’s last big musical outing in Dublin was a performance of his

This is how it feels (Another Bolero)

at the 2008 RTÉ Living Music Festival.

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Fennessy's new orchestral work, Bodies, an RTÉ commission, opens the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's concert tonight. The rest of the programme continues the orchestra's survey of Shostakovich (with Hugh Tinney playing the First Piano Concerto and Graham Hastings providing the trumpet obligato) and Tchaikovsky (the Symphony No 4 of 1878). The conductor is Dmitri Jurowski (pictured above), who made such a big impression at his Wexford Festival debut in 2007 that he was promptly invited back for 2008.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor