Conductor Nicholas McGegan has secured a coup for the closing concert of the Debis AirFrance Killaloe Music Festival: the Irish premiΦre of the Handel Gloria for soprano and strings, which was discovered at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London earlier this year. McGegan gave the official modern premiΦre with Dominique Labelle and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in G÷ttingen last month, a performance which was immediately followed by the premiΦre on CD, with Emma Kirkby and students from the RAM.
The newly unearthed work, believed to have been composed in Rome in 1707, has caused great excitement. McGegan predicts a bright future for it and enthusiastically describes it as a baroque virtuoso equivalent of Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate. The Irish premiΦre, on Sunday July 22nd, will be given by Northern Irish soprano Mary Nelson.
The Irish Chamber Orchestra has just announced the appointment of McGegan as music director for a three-year term from September 2002. He will conduct up to eight concerts in Ireland each year, tour internationally, make recordings, and he will also become artistic director of the Debis AirFinance Killaloe Music Festival. McGegan, (who will be interviewed by Michael Dervan in tomorrow's arts page) is well known as a conductor of baroque and classical repertoire. He has been music director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco for 15 years and artistic director of the Handel Festival in G÷ttingen since 1990.
