‘When my life was more stable, my music was more active, more gritty. When my life has been chaotic my music has calmed down’
New Music Dublin 2024: The composers Bekah Simms, Raymond Deane, Linda Buckley and Rhona Clarke on their creative processes
Raymond Deane
Embers: Haunting, unsettling evocations of the past
Works by Irish composer Raymond Deane enclose a much longer piece by Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov
Bach in season: This week’s classical music highlights
NCH hosts concerts by Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki and Malcolm Proud
New Music Dublin: A myriad of creative musical endeavours
With more than 20 events over four days, the festival features the best in contemporary music
The best classical music to see this week
The Irish Language Art Song Project , the next in NSO’s Bruckner series and pianist Simon Trpceski
Vagabones review: Irish witchcraft meets Irish opera
Raymond Deane’s Vagabones dramatises one of the few witch trials to have ever taken place in Ireland
NCH’s chamber music series offers flexibility amid closure uncertainty
Collaboration part of long tradition of composers coming together with mixed results
This week’s best classical music gigs
Yuga Wang makes her Irish debut, and Vagabones gets its first Irish airing
Composer Roger Doyle elevated to Saoi by Aosdána
Previous holders of title include Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel and Seamus Heaney
Claude Debussy centenary: Irish composers salute the master
Ireland’s Tombeau to Debussy includes new pieces from seven Irish composers and a trio of NCH concerts
Can anything be salvaged from the New Music Dublin Festival?
There’s no way that the whole programme can be saved – it’s too big and too complicated for that
Nathalie Stutzmann takes a bow with RTÉ NSO
Classical highlights: Veronika Eberle, Tallis Scholars and RTÉ Contempo Quartet
Feast of Russian miniatures: This week’s classical music highlights
Elisaveta Blumina in Dublin, RTÉ Contempo Quartet on tour and Irish Baroque Orchestra
Jean Butler: ‘It’s very exposing for both of us’
Her new work, with musician Neil Martin, is designed as a conversation between music and dance and sees her going back to her roots
Composing the Island: Starting with the best works is never wise
The celebration of 100 years of Irish composition hits mid-century, revealing a dark age for orchestral music
Celebration of Irish composers neglects women and living composers under 30
Composing the Island festival is huge, but it neglects women and living composers under 30
Courtney Lewis serves up an energetic slice of Haydn
The conductor and the RTÉ NSO show Haydn a good time; and Ó Riada’s score for Mise Éire leaves me cold
Conductor Courtney Lewis: ‘I didn’t want the lonely existence of staring at a blank page’
The Belfast man studied at Cambridge with the goal of becoming a composer, but the lure of conducting led him to a rewarding career in the US
A Yeatsian balancing act between music and words
Yeats might well have appreciated the wordiness of William Brooks’s Everlasting Voices, which revisits the poet’s ideals of ‘chaunting’
Kirkos Ensemble are drawn to the dark side
Classical Music: The ensemble is to give a series of concerts in the dark; elsewhere, street opera proves a slippery business
A fantastic early history of the Irish avant-garde
What, you haven’t heard of Zaftig Giolla or the Guinness Dadaists? Let Jennifer Walshe enlighten you
Culture Shock: Anything’s better than doing nothing about Gaza
In times of conflict, culture also becomes a battleground
WWI commemorations should focus on victims - Ballagh
Artist says generals have been polishing the medals and buttons they got ‘for killing people’
Raymond Deane, one-time writer of acidic reviews, turns his pen on himself
When reviewing, the composer’s invective was extreme. He is no less frank when writing about his own life, alcoholism and recovery
Opera houses survive, even thrive, despite Boulez’s pessimism
Opera repertoire has broadened since the French composer’s 1967 comments, and ‘The Invader’ continues a fine recent tradition of new opera in Ireland
The low-down on Lang Lang and how China will change music
The most frequently quoted number for piano students in China is 50 million. The implications are huge
Stradivari unstrung? New violins fare better in blind test
A study nails the myth of the yawning gap between present instruments and those of the great masters
The shock of the New Music Dublin
A fascination with music of an experimental hue was evident in this programme
Operatic treats: Dvorak’s fairy tale and a love doll of Mrs Mahler
The past week saw operatic premieres in Dublin by Raymond Deane and, of all people, Antonin Dvorak
Raymond Deane’s new opera is based on an artist who had a life-like doll made of his former lover
When Alma Mahler, the widow of composer Gustav Mahler, broke up with the artist Oskar Kokoschka, he made an anatomically accurate doll of her, and that's inspired Raymond Deane's third opera
Surprise exit: what is behind the departure of RTÉ old hand Crimmins?
The bowing-out of one of RTÉ’s most experienced musical hands is a bombshell
Stirring rendition of Enescu’s ‘Octet’
The RTÉ Vanbrugh and Jupiter String Quartets produced a blitz of energy
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