The National Concert Hall celebrated its 25th anniversary on Saturday with an evocation of the gala concert which opened the hall on September 9th, 1981.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor, Gerhard Markson, were on hand to reprise Beethoven's Choral Symphony and, as in 1981, they opened with a specially-commissioned work by an Irish composer, John Buckley's celebratory Campane in Aria. Conductor and orchestra feature on a new 48c commemorative stamp from An Post.
Many of the faces who were there 25 years ago returned for the occasion.
The hall's first manager, Lindsay Armstrong, and first chairman, Fred O'Donovan were present, as were members of the six boards who have steered the hall's fate over the years, including current chairman David Byrne, and predecessors Dermot Egan and Lewis Clohessy. The President, Mrs McAleese, was in attendance, and Dr Patrick Hillery, too, who was President on the occasion of the 1981 inauguration.
The buzz was rather different in 1981. The facilities were restricted. There was no restaurant, no music shop, no organ. And one of the early talking points was the fact that neither coffee nor stout were served in the early days. But Dublin was leaving behind the embarrassment of being a European capital without a concert hall and the new future that was opening up was the cause of great excitement.
The existing hall's inadequacies have become more obvious over the years, and now the excitement is about the Government having given the go-ahead for a €175 million capital investment in developing a new, state-of-the art venue on the Earlsfort Terrace site.
Among the guests at the concert were organist and one-time board member Gerard Gillen (whose campaigning delivered the hall's Kenneth Jones organ in 1991), composer Seoirse Bodley (whose Symphony No 3, Ceol, with audience participation, was premiered on the opening night), conductor Colman Pearce (who conducted it), RTÉ lyric fm broadcasters John Kelly and Liz Nolan, soprano Cara O'Sullivan, Arts Council music specialist Fergus Sheil, former Arts Minister Síle De Valera, pianist Hugh Tinney (who succeeded NCH director Judith Woodworth as artistic director of the IIB Bank Music in Great Irish Houses festival), and Ciara Higgins (the festival's current director). - Michael Dervan
