Next year's menu for music-lovers was unveiled at a lunch at the National Concert Hall yesterday. A feast, on the face of it, though the flavours seem more familiar than exotic. One undoubted treat, however, will be a recital by the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, who opens the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series on September 18th. Returning to perform in that series will be Mitsuko Uschida, Maxim Vengerov, Evgeny Kissin and Philippe Cassard; and they will be joined by the young British pianist Freddy Kempf. On the big guns front, symphony orchestras scheduled for the NCH/Sunday Business Post series include the Detroit National SO under Neeme Jarvi, the Danish National Radio SO under Gerd Allbrecht, the City of Birmingham SO under Sakari Oramo and the National Symphony Orchestra Washington under Leonard Slatkin. A series of Schubert symphonies is slotted in for November, with Howard Shelley and Barry Douglas conducting the Orchestra of St Cecilia; and both the contemporary music series Composers' Choice and the Celtic music festival, Beo - which this year will explore links between Irish and Scottish music, with concerts by Capercaillie, Lunasa and Dervish, among others - will continue.
So this is art
The 2001 Belfast Festival at Queen's is signing in early, with hundreds of hugs and kisses. Things of a touchy-feely nature are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the usual fare of this massive international event, which celebrates its 38th birthday this year. Stretching the imagination, however, is one of the pledges made by new director Stella Hall: "Kissarama" - the Belfast attempt on the world record for the largest number of people kissing in one place, at one time - is early evidence of her intentions to create new artistic partnerships and spread festival events throughout the year.
In collaboration with local arts organisation Grassy Knoll, the distinguished Spanish conceptual artist Asier PerezGonzalez has been called in to create the environment for over 200 couples to gather at the new Odyssey Pavilion this coming Saturday and be recorded for global consumption in the process. If the sunshine holds, the music is loud, the crowds gather and the day-long celebrations take hold, it should be quite a giggle. But there will, no doubt, be plenty of baffled passers-by, who may raise a collective eyebrow and ask "But is it art?"
Edited by Arminta Wallace
