To mark International Women's Day on March 8, the National Symphony Orchestra celebrates with the first of two concerts, this evening a celebration of seven distinctive, very different pioneering female voices from Ireland, Europe and the United States, with rising star conductor Nil Venditti leading the NSO - get your digital programme here.
The NSO’s own principal flute, Catriona Ryan, steps into the spotlight for Cécile Chaminade’s exquisitely romantic, eloquently French-sounding Concertino for Flute.
Closer to home, Ina Boyle’s The Magic Harp evocatively conjures the Irish myth of the durd-alba, the sinuously, sensually moving wind among apple trees in blossom, in a ravishing rhapsody for orchestra.
Voices from the New World include Joan Tower’s thrilling, brass-led Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No.1, Cindy McTee’s audacious The Unquestioned Answer, complete with horns, harp, cowbell and bongos, and the cinematic sweep and grandeur of London-born, US-resident Anna Clyne’s exuberant, glistening Masquerade.
A more antique accent is heard in the ornately Classical splendour of the then 24-year-old Vienna-born celebrity Marianna Martines’ sumptuous, late 18th-century Overture in C. And from the folk-music inspired soul of Czech music, Vítězslava Kaprálová’s ebulliently colourful Suita Rustica is a vivacious orchestral fantasy from a composer whose vivacious vitality and promise was cut short by her early death, aged 25.
