Name: Summer Lunchtime Concert
Start: 2023-07-18T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2023-07-18T00:00:00.000Z
Location: National Concert Hall (NCH)

Organization

Conductor

Alice Farnham

Instrumentalist

Gary Beecher

Piano

National Concert Hall

Orchestra

National Symphony Orchestra

Summer Lunchtime Concert

Dublin

Ireland

National Concert Hall (NCH)

Public

On the Town

Rhapsody in Blue

Four Dances from Rodeo

Approved

A flying lunchtime visit to America takes in New York and the Wild West in three blazing, dance-led pieces by composers who gave the New World its own distinctive, melody-laced voice.

The thrill of the city that never sleeps is given an adrenalin, jazz-accented boost in Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, a vivacious portrait in miniature of 24 exhausting hours in the Big Apple.

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is a euphoric hymn to one of the world’s most exhilarating cities, and to America the bold, in effervescent music whose piano line channels Liszt at his most pneumatic and Tchaikovsky with his heart most squarely on sleeve.  

Borrowing from American folk tunes, the Four Dance Episodes from Copland’s colourful and witty ballet Rodeo deliver a virtuoso display of orchestral colour and exuberance. A vivid portrait of frontier life in 19th-century America, its ‘Hoe-Down’ finale is an energetic rustic dance with a traditional Irish reel at its heart.

Leading the National Symphony Orchestra, Alice Farnham – who is ‘doing more than anyone to change the face of conducting in the UK’ (Daily Telegraph) – makes a welcome return to the National Concert Hall, where she was Artistic Director of the Female Conductor Programme from 2017-22.

Joining them for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is the ‘subtle, sophisticated… with a maturity of both technique and interpretative outlook’ (Belfast Telegraph) Irish pianist Gary Beecher.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Ensemble