On the Town: The National Concert Hall was a bit like a racetrack before the off this week. Regular concert-goers, heads down, ticked the performances of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra that they plan to attend over the coming year.
Guests, such as Mary Tuohy of the Hallward Gallery, pen at the ready, carefully studied the newly launched programme of the RTÉ NSO's 2004-2005 season.
Gerhard Markson, the orchestra's principal conductor, had some words of advice for those planning to enjoy a festival of Beethoven next year: "Make sure you eat well the weekend before, and then fasten your seat belts."
As for the orchestra's new sponsor, Anglo Irish Bank, he compared it to the Medici family of Florence, the major patrons of the arts during the Renaissance period. "There must be something in the genes of bankers that makes them very fond of the arts," he said, smiling.
Stars such as violin soloist, Fionnuala Hunt, who will be playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3 in G major with the orchestra in November, and composer Gerald Barry, whose new opera, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, will be premièred by the RTÉ NSO next May, were also there.
Pianist and composer Conor Linehan, who is off to compose music for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, will perform Stravinsky's Concerto for piano and wind instruments next February with the RTÉ NSO, under the baton of Alexander Anissimov.
Others who attended the launch this week were concert pianist John O'Conor, who flew to Australia yesterday to adjudicate at the Sydney International Piano Competition; Brídín Gilroy, whose niece, soprano Orla Boylan, will sing at a concert of Mozart, Schubert and Mahler next February, and Prof Des O'Neill, of Tallaght Hospital and TCD's department of medical gerontology, who will give a pre-concert talk on Friday, September 24th, on composers who wrote after suffering a stroke. The concert, A Stroke of Genius, will feature the music of Ravel, Stravinsky and Schnittke.
For more details, see Artscape, below