RTÉ Concert Orchestra with Chamber Choir Ireland: Buckley, Neuwirth & Bennett

RTÉ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Maloney conductor
Emma Nash and Kim Sheehan sopranos
Chamber Choir Ireland
Clément Saunier piccolo trumpet 
Xenia Pestova Bennett piano

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Irene Buckley Lament for Art O'Leary (Live premiere)
Olga Neuwirth Miramondo Multiplo (Irish premiere)
Ed Bennett Piano Concerto (World premiere)

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New Music Dublin’s 2025 orchestral concert with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra presents an array of new works under the baton of Gavin Maloney - New Music Dublin stalwart and the orchestra’s Associate Principal Conductor.

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Lament for Art O’Leary, the new opera by Irene Buckley, is performed here by Kim Sheehan and Emma Nash. The opera’s text is by poet Vona Groarke, who translated the 18th-century ‘poem that isn’t quite a poem’, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. This hauntingly powerful new opera turns Eibhlín Dubh’s red-hot grief from over 230 years ago into a powerful present-day lament.

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Olga Neuwirth’s new composition …Miramondo Multiplo… for trumpet and orchestra is clearly to be understood as an homage to ‘her’ instrument, to which she has for some years repeatedly been dedicating a central solo role within her works.

 

Ed Bennett’s new Piano Concerto is performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett, described by BBC Radio 3 as ‘a brilliantly free-thinking and fearless pianist’. Bennett is an Irish composer whose music has been described as ‘deeply compelling’ (The Sunday Times), ‘stunningly intense’ (The Quietus) and ‘unmistakably distinctive’ (Gramophone).

 

The Lament for Art O'Leary (2024) by Irene Buckley with libretto by Vona Groarke. A new orchestration composed for the Lyric Feature for performance by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland and soloists.