RTÉ Concert Orchestra Summer Lunchtime

Gavin Maloney conductor
Anne-Marie O’Farrell harp
Presented by Liz Nolan, RTÉ lyric fm
RTÉ Concert Orchestra

PROGRAMME:
Glinka Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture
Anne-Marie O’Farrell In Light Anew (Irish Première, RTÉ Lyric fm commission)
Mendelssohn Overture & Nocturne from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Tchaikovsky Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty   

Fall under the RTÉ Concert Orchestra’s spell in a magical hour of musical escapism inspired by fairies and folklore.  

Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Ludmilla was written after an epic fairytale-inspired poem, and its boisterous Overture makes for an exuberant curtain-raiser. In Irish folklore the harp is associated with the ancient race of fairies known as Tuatha Dé Danann. It’s fitting then, that the Irish première of a harp concerto by composer and harpist Anne-Marie O’Farrell is at the heart of this lunchtime programme.  

Shakespeare’s fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are drawn together by music, and we’ll hear their antics beautifully portrayed in Mendelssohn’s Overture and Nocturne, before Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty brings us joyfully whirling back to the wakeful present.