Since taking the top prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1986, Belfast pianist Barry Douglas has done just about everything you could imagine.
He has recorded a string of CDs. He has taken up conducting. He has his own orchestra, Camerata Ireland, with its own international concert series, and a mini-festival at Castletown House, and a separate festival at Clandeboye House, near Bangor. He has become an OBE. And he has even appeared in a movie, playing himself in John Schlesinger’s Madame Sousatzka. Is this enough? Not on your life. Now he wants to play and conduct in the two piano concertos by Brahms, in spite of the fact that when Brahms himself played these works, there was a conductor on hand to control the orchestra. Douglas celebrates Culture Night by tackling the First Concerto with the RTÉ NSO at the NCH on Friday, when he’ll also conduct Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He does draw the line somewhere, though. There will be an early evening (7pm) performance of the piano version of the Pictures, which will be given by Sophie Cashell. see url.ie/7cyv.
