January saw the opening of Belfast's new 2,234-seat new Waterfront Hall, a welcome addition to the city's skyline, pride and musical resources. Early concerts there raised questions about the quality of the acoustic, which, based on my own listening as well as the experience of other concert goers I've spoken to, seems to vary a lot, depending on where you sit.
The hall's own classical music promotions are mainly limited to a strange range of visiting orchestras. Mixed as the line-up may be, it still leaves provincial Belfast far more generously provided for in this regard than Celtic Tiger capital Dublin. The 500seater Waterfront Studio is a performing space that Dubliners can also look at with envy. In November, with the Waterfront at the centre of activity, Belfast audiences got a flavour of the tastes of the Belfast Festival's new programme director, Sean Doran, who has thoroughly re-invigorated the musical end of Ireland's biggest arts festival.
Ireland's biggest non-operatic music festival is now the Bantry-based West Cork Chamber Music Festival, where this year the highlights included some spell-binding Messiaen from visiting pianist, Joanna MacGregor. The NCH's attempt at a Bantry residency-style programming for some Schubert'n'Brahms concerts in September didn't quite come off.
Opera Ireland seems to have got a shot in the arm from its new artistic director, Dieter Kaegi. If the standards of the Spring Macbeth (directed by Kaegi himself) and the Winter Eugene Onegin (James Robinson) can be maintained, the company could well see a lift in its artistic fortunes. It will be interesting to see how the Arts Council responds to Kaegi's plea to have the Gaiety Theatre purchased as a venue for opera.
Max Levinson was not a popular choice as first prizewinner of the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition in May. But he seems a sounder musician than 1994 winner Davide Franceschetti, who hasn't exactly covered either himself or the competition in glory over the last three years.
The year's welcome new developments included short contemporary music festivals at UCC in April and in Sligo in November. Dubliners also witnessed a new Liberties-based Handelfest in April. October saw the launch of the Crash Ensemble, a contemporary music group which had to turn people away from its sold-out first gig. With really exciting programming targets, this is a group to watch out for.
Principal conductor-elect, Alexander Anissimov, remains the major good news story for the NSO. Some of the reviews of the British tour under Kasper de Roo in February were frankly damning, and there's very little that's convincingly celebratory about the current golden jubilee season. The visiting Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in April showed just what's wrong. Under David Zinman, this orchestra, representing a city that's not a capital and with half the population of Dublin, plays with a sense of seasoned ensemble and showed itself fully at home with a soloist of the calibre of Radu Lupu. RTE no longer seems bothered to ensure that musicians of this level work regularly with the NSO. It's everybody's loss. Let's hope the soon-to-be-appointed director of music at RTE will be given the resources to improve the situation.
Individual events which stood out during the year include the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet at Killruddery in June, the Prometeo String Quartet at the Wexford Festival, Alfred Brendel in Schubert and the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum at the Belfast Festival, Hugh Tinney and the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet playing Donnacha Dennehy's Pluck, Stroke And Hammer on a Music Network tour, and the phenomenal musical concentration of Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov at the NCH earlier this month.
Wishlist 1998:
Improving the situation of RTE's two orchestras - in concert (at home and abroad), on the air (radio and television), and on disc (for the RTECO, in particular) - is going to be an operation intensive of human and financial resources. Only the utmost commitment at the highest levels within RTE will make worthwhile the appointment of a new director of music.
And, specifically, isn't it surely time for the NSO to bring Irish audiences some regular representation of the work of the world's leading living composers, an area in which the orchestra's contribution is at a continuing all-time low?
It would be nice to think that the new Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile de Valera, will care to see that the outcome is positive. Her silence on matters in this whole area is disquieting.
On a positive note, RTE's support of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival - including broadcasts across Europe - has been essential to the festival's success. The major guests in 1998 will be the legendary Borodin String Quartet.
