This Culture Night, John Finucane performs Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra as part of their new live season at the National Concert Hall.
The concert will be live-streamed worldwide in HD here on RTÉ Culture and broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm on Friday September 18th at 7 pm - watch it here.
Below, John shares his diary as he looks forward to rehearsals and performance...
Dear Diary,
I've been practicing at home for months now, aiming at many different concerts that were all eventually cancelled. I’m not the only one, all my colleagues have been in the same boat, just waiting for that chance to break back to a little normality. And it has arrived!
Last Friday the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra played its first concert for ages, with Catríona Ryan as the wonderful flute soloist and David Brophy conducting, or 'on the box’ as we often say.
It was a sort of milestone. Due to all the restrictions, I couldn’t be there, as I would have been normally, but it was broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm and it was live-streamed. It was super, you could sense how everyone was feeling, a musical escape back into the real world. Well almost the real world, there is still no audience, and as music is form of communication, a real live audience would be the norm, as it will someday soon, I hope!
The reason I am writing all this is because this Friday it’s my turn. I’m honoured and delighted to have been asked to perform the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the RTÉ NSO and Gavin Maloney for the same type of concert - live-streamed on RTÉ Culture and live on RTÉ lyric fm. It’s going to be strange for me. I left the RTÉ NSO in February to freelance with orchestral work, chamber music, and some conducting. There hasn’t been much work around for obvious reasons. So the last time I was on the stage was February 14th and that’s a long time ago. I’ve missed performing during this time but mostly I’ve missed my colleagues. A coffee with a few people before rehearsal, similar at coffee break, lunch with others, the little social interactions we make help forge the musical ties between us and help mould our performance and our style. I miss that!
So joining them next week isn’t just a concerto, it’s a renewal of many friendships and a reminder of how it used to be.
The concerto itself is special to me. It was the first piece I recorded for broadcast with the original Light Orchestra with Colman Pierce conducting. I was on the summer course of the Irish Youth Orchestra in Rockwell College and took the country bus up to Dublin to record it in the radio centre. It went well and I remember suddenly feeling quite professional on the way back.
Although I have performed it so many times since then I never got around to buying a Basset Clarinet; this is a clarinet with a four-note extension downwards and would be a modernized version of the clarinet that Anton Stadler played (he was the man for whom Mozart wrote it.) It is only really used for this concerto and the matching quintet along with a few modern works, so I couldn’t justify the expense for relatively few performances! It also disturbs be a little, as I am so used to the more usual version the extra low notes make me think only of the changes to the text rather than the actual music…
Anyway I need to go and do some practice so I’ll close now and maybe write another entry very soon...
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra 's Culture Night concert will be live-streamed worldwide in HD here on RTÉ Culture and broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm on Friday September 18th at 7 pm - watch it here.
