"Teatime Concert Series at the NCH," says the blurb from RTÉ Music. An old-fashioned word, "teatime", redolent of the times before pizza and pasta when people came home for dinner in the middle of the day - times when the word "tea" connoted not just the staple non-alcoholic drink of this country, but a meal taken around six in the evening, writes Liam McAuley.
Sausages, bacon, liver, fried egg and tomato, perhaps, in wintertime; or maybe just a boiled or poached egg, with home-baked scones and jam to follow, or a slice of apple tart.
In summer, salad - which in those days meant slices of cold ham or tongue, or some tinned salmon or sardines, or perhaps stuffed eggs, served with lettuce, scallions, "home-grown" (i.e. Irish) tomatoes, beetroot, pickled onions, brown bread ("wheaten", we called it up North) and butter.
And at any time of year, tea, plentiful and boiling hot, made with leaves in a pot, and left to "draw", not in a tea-cosy, English-style, but on the stove.
"High tea"
But what of "high tea" - that fine institution of old-style hotels, a stomach-popping cornucopia of mixed grill or salad, with mountains of chips, bread, scones, jam, sticky buns and more - all served in style on china plates with silver service. Does anyone do it any more?
Teatime - a word laden with memories, recalling days when I'd finally trail home, sweaty and starving after some never-ending game of football or cowboys 'n' Indians, to be told I'd "missed tea". Then, after various ultimatums, dire threats and despairing comments about the state of my clothes and filth of my hands, my mother would grudgingly relent and revoke the unthinkable sentence of being sent to bed hungry.
To my own children, tea is just a drink they do not like, much preferring fruit juices, or 7-Up, or just plain water. It's certainly not a meal. And "teatime" is not in their active vocabulary, though having heard me use the word (which usually evokes from them a look of sardonic tolerance), they know it means the time their father comes home from work, hoping to be fed.
Teatime: an almost quaint word, then, with which to label the series of five concerts featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, which began last Friday evening and run weekly at 6.30 p.m. until September 6th. With younger audiences in mind, shouldn't they be called pre-pub, or pre-club, or pre-pizza, or pre-party, or even pre-chilling-out-for-the-weekend?
Convivial surroundings
Such were the thoughts meandering through my mind last Friday as I walked up Grafton Street and across Stephen's Green to the NCH for the first concert in the teatime series, featuring Yoana Petcu-Colan. This young violinist, raised in Ireland of Romanian parents, gave an enthralling performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto: I have never heard an NCH audience so quiet and rapt as during the first-movement cadenza. As well as supporting the soloist in this work, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Proinnsías Ó Duinn gave stirring renditions of the composer's Coriolan Overture and Fourth Symphony.
Apart from the power of the music, and the convivial surroundings - surely the NCH is one of the most pleasant venues anywhere, whatever its sonic shortcomings - the concert was a perfect aperitif for (yes, I admit) the plate of pasta and glass of wine that were to follow. It also whetted the musical appetite for the remainder of a tasty-looking series.
According to Assumpta Lawless, who is in charge of marketing and communications for RTE Music, the teatime concerts are designed to appeal to people just finishing their week's work, and perhaps ready to be wooed by classical music that is relatively light in feel and approach.
Ronan Guilfoyle
But this does not mean the schedule lacks novelty or innovation: next Friday, August 16th, Conor Linehan will perform the world première of a piano concerto by Ronan Guilfoyle, the established jazz bassist and composer, who has also been writing for classical ensembles in recent years. The work demands almost continuous playing by the soloist and includes the use of a drum kit, rather than solely orchestral percussion, in order to emphasise the rhythmic elements of the music. This programme, under the French conductor Laurent Wagner, is completed by the first symphonies of Beethoven and Prokofiev.
The other concerts - on Fridays August 23rd and 30th, and September 3rd respectively - will feature the Swedish violinist Frederik Burstedt playing Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy and Stenhammer's Sentimental Romances; the English pianist Phillip Dyson playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue; and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra's principal harpist Triona Marshall, performing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, more familiar as a piece for guitar, or, to fans of Miles Davis, as Sketches of Spain. All events in the series can be booked at 01-417-0000 or www.nch.ie.
Apart from the teatime concerts' considerable entertainment value, RTÉ is promoting them as an attractive way to escape from Friday evening traffic - not to mention the vagaries of the weather. And if you can manage to get out of work early enough, you might even make time for tea.