The National Concert Hall announcement of plans for the 1998/99 season came at what might have been judged an awkward moment. The events were publicised at a press launch less than a week after a planning appeal aimed at preventing the Office of Public Works from converting a rare and historic real tennis court on the NCH's Earslfort Terrace site into a 300-seater recital hall.
The chairman of the NCH board, however, made light of the controversy. Dermot Egan spoke of the new venue as a "millennium project", and, in an upbeat mood, the director of the NCH, Judith Woodworth, said an opening schedule for the new hall would be announced in the autumn.
Dermot Egan told me he had "no concerns" over the conservation issues raised by planning appeals against the recital hall. The development is being opposed by an international range of interests who wish to see the 1883 building restored to its original condition as a uniquely black-slate-panelled court for the game of real tennis. If people want to play real tennis, said Mr Egan, they can go to Lambay Island, where there is another court.
He also confirmed that the NCH hopes to relocate the rehearsals of the National Symphony Orchestra to the new hall. This has yet to be discussed in detail with the orchestra's management in RTE, but the proposal can be expected to meet fierce resistance. An RTE spokeswoman told me the station's view was that the new space would be inappropriate for orchestral use, and the musicians are likely to dig their heels in with all the firmness they can muster.
Egan was unable to provide details of the budget requirements of the new venue, or of the level of activity the NCH aspires to generate in it. I couldn't help wondering if the ex-banker would ever have contemplated opening a new branch without the answers to similar relevant questions. He did, however, say the NCH board has set up an artistic sub-committee to look into these matters.
There hasn't been much publicity for the NCH's plans for the new venue, which, it must be emphasised is not the long-mooted second hall within the main Earlsfort Terrace building. The wisdom of creating a new hall with a glass roof in a location end on to a busy city street is one which must be questioned, even if the acoustic consultants, Jordan Akustik (who are recommending a lowish reverberation time of 1.6 seconds), claim to be "very confident that all noise will be excluded from the recital hall, excepting the occasional siren".
The wisdom of setting up a second performing space in the control of the NCH as currently constituted must also be questioned. It is not widely known, but most of the concerts which take place in Earlsfort Terrace, the hall functions merely as a receiving venue, renting out the space and taking in the hiring fee. Although the hall is the major state institution specifically for music, its own promotional neglect of Irish music and Irish musicians remains shameful. A handful of "celebrity" concerts , a few visiting orchestras, and a series of summer lunchtime concerts are the sum of its mainstream promotional endeavours. (I'm not counting the externally-originating co-productions which are one of the better developments of recent years.)
It's not that the celebrity or orchestral events are in any sense unwelcome, or that the hall's various educational initiatives are not to be valued. But, simply stated, the concert series of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery show a broader perception and a deeper appreciation of the realities and strengths of the musical community of modern Ireland.
As an institution, the NCH has taken the grand high road of presenting itself, in the words of its current marketing slogan, as "where the world comes to play" rather than, as you might expect of a national concert hall, where you can also go to hear, on a planned week-in, week-out basis, the very best of what Irish musicians and composers have to offer. The sole, state-funded, dedicated music venue in the country, is, unaccountably, happier to spend the £20,000 to £50,000 or more that a single visiting orchestra may cost than present, say, a weekly or fortnightly series of Irish performers. For a new and very badly needed performing space to become the gift of the short-sighted and effectively anti-national attitudes of the NCH rather than an independent body which by its competitive vitality could shame that venue into action, would seem to me a retrogressive and, in the longer term, a musically stifling move. And the additional claims of the proposed new conservatoire in Earsfort Terrace are most unlikely to improve matters. In the era of the Celtic Tiger, it is surely time for some of Dublin's historic music venues - the Rotunda (currently the Ambassador Cinema) or the Ancient Concert Rooms on Pearse Street - to be restored to their original purpose.
