Madam, - The visionary board of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland has captured the spirit of the nation. Ireland's two national youth orchestras must be amalgamated for the same reason that we must doggedly plough a motorway through Tara. Times are hard! Recruitment difficulties and rising costs must be tackled by strategic reviews and downsizing.
May I modestly propose to the board that it should spurn its critics and steel itself to still greater things? Why not now lay off all current players, register the newly-merged orchestra offshore, outsource the musicians, and so "enrich further the nation's cultural life" by reducing overheads and increasing competitiveness?
Be steadfast, members of the NYOI board: the Celtic Tiger cubs in your charge will surely be glad to play the stock exchange rather than perform Stockhausen! - Yours etc,
Dr PETER CROOKS, Castleforbes Square, Dublin 1.
Madam, - As a parent of two children who have had the privilege of performing with the National Youth Orchestras, I can attest to the richness of their experiences: the skills acquired, the repertoire explored, the challenges met, the friendships forged. That the Board of the NYOI should now seek to dilute what it has taken many years to shape and develop - two outstanding orchestras which, in my opinion, have attained and maintained an especially high standard in recent years - is simply baffling.
In its announcement on the NYOI website, the board states that the NYOI needs "to change and evolve with the times". According to the dictionary, "to evolve" means "to bring to fuller development". How a decision based on cuts, reductions and disenfranchisement can be seen as evolutionary is, again, baffling.
Although the impact of this decision will be most keenly felt by those talented players who will remain outside the quota of places available in the reconstituted orchestra, many more musicians will be affected by the board's decision. I refer to the hundreds of players who belong to local community youth orchestras, small ensembles that have taken inspiration from the work of the NYOI and have developed in tandem with its orchestras. The standard achieved by the National Youth Orchestras has served as a measure of excellence for these performing groups, with players aspiring to one day play in these premier ensembles.
I cannot see who will gain by this decision. I urge the board to reconsider, to build on what it has taken many people many years to create, rather than destroy it. - Yours, etc,
GRAINNE GORMLEY, Mountpleasant Square, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
Madam, - Reading the letters in The Irish Timesconcerning the merging of the two constituent youth orchestras of the NYOI, I despair for the future of music in Ireland. I am currently visiting a small city in Bulgaria, Ruse, which has a population of 150,000. It supports an opera house and an opera philharmonia orchestra, and has a specialist music school which, in addition to the standard second-level curriculum subjects such as mathematics, history, and so on, provides advanced music tuition in the instrument of their calling to those students who attend it. It goes without saying that it has its own orchestras and chamber music groups.
This city is not unique in Bulgaria. Last week I was in a city of of only 50,000 people, Vidin, where a professional symphony orchestra of 47 players performs regular programmes in the philharmonic hall. There are other places I can point to - Razgrad, Plovdiv, Varna - and I haven't mentioned Sofia, the capital. This musical activity happens in a country which supposedly is one of the poorest in Europe.
In Ireland, young people are lucky to get even half-an-hour of tuition each week, and orchestral studies are limited to a number of small orchestras put together by volunteers in the music schools, largely without any support from the State or from local authorities. If Ireland is supposedly one of the richest countries in Europe, I think we are measuring wealth with the wrong yardstick.
The merging of the two constituent orchestras of the NYOI into one will effectively remove a significant number of opportunities for young people in Ireland to participate in orchestral studies - and this in a country which provides little by way of such opportunities in the first place. The resignation of Donagh Collins was a cry of desperation. Will anybody with any influence listen? - Yours, etc,
FERGUS JOHNSTON, Composer, Trader's Wharf, Dublin 8.