Saturday, February 29th
New Music Dublin
National Concert Hall and other venues; newmusicdublin.ie
The last two days of the New Music Dublin festival bring a portrait concert of Kevin O'Connell (by Belfast's Hard Rain Ensemble), the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's programme of Daniel Bjarnason, Siobhán Cleary, Jane O'Leary and Hugi Gudmundsson (box will be the first orchestral work by the Icelandic composer to be heard in Ireland), and a late night programme of improvised music with BABs, ReDiviDeR and the Guillaume Orti/Stéphane Payen duo, all on Saturday. Sunday brings Crash Ensemble's Free State 12 (including new works by Amanda Feery, Inti Figgis-Vizueta, Adam McCartney, Daniel McDermott and Matthew Whiteside at 1.30pm), Xenia Pestova Bennett's Atomic Legacies (3pm), Chamber Choir Ireland in works by composers from Estonia, USA, Serbia, Iran and Canada (6pm at the Pepper Canister Church) and the closing concert by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Bang on a Can All-Stars in Gerald Barry and Julia Wolfe (8pm).
Thursday, March 5th
Hugh Tinney
National Concert Hall Studio, Dublin; nci.ie
Pianist Hugh Tinney, curator of the NCH's Beethoven: his predecessors and successors series has taken just a single programme all to himself. He's playing Haydn's Sonata in C minor, Hob XVI: 20, Beethoven's Sonata in E flat, Op 81a (Les Adieux), Schumann's Fantasiestücke Op. 111, and Schubert's Sonata in C minor, D958. The concert takes place in the NCH Studio, which is much more acoustically agreeable than the Kevin Barry Recital Room.
Friday, March 6th
RTÉ NSO/Michail Jurowski
National Concert Hall, Dublin; nci.ie
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra opens its concert with Sofia Gubaidulina's 1971 Fairytale Poem on the day that the Finding a Voice festival focused on music by women gets into full swing in Clonmel. Gubaidulina wrote the music for a radio broadcast of a Czech fairy tale, The Little Chalk, a story she saw as a parable about an artist's destiny. Daniel Kharitonov is the soloist in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, and the concert, which is conducted by Michail Jurowski (father of two conducting sons, Vladimir and Dmitri) ends with excerpts from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella.
Finding a Voice includes works by, in order of appearance, Lili Boulanger, Anne Boyd, Mélanie Bonis, Alyson Barber, Tania León, Dora Pejacevic, Sofia Gubaidulina, Missy Mazzoli, Caroline Shaw, Gráinne Mulvey (the specially-commissioned Sun of Orient Crimson with Excess of Light), Mary Kouyoumdjian, Siobhán Cleary, Rose Connolly, Ailís Ní Ríain, Sally Beamish, Eibhlís Farrell, Joan Trimble, Elinor Evans, Anne-Marie O'Farrell, Caroline Lizotte, Hildegard von Bingen, Francesca Caccini, Isabella Leonarda, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Antonia Bembo. And the RIAM Philharmonia's lunchtime concert in Dublin (St Bartholomew's Church, Clyde Road, 1.05pm) includes Ina Boyle's Wildgeese as well as pieces by Schubert and Schumann. Gerhard Markson conducts.
