New Music Dublin: Irene Buckley, Olga Neuwirth, Ed Bennett

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

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

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.

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.

Olga Neuwirth’s Miramondo Multiplo is a riveting trumpet concerto written for piccolo trumpet. Having started out as a jazz trumpeter, Neuwirth draws on this experience alongside neoclassical influences in this composition, with the opening motif of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony quickly followed by a riff from Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.

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).

Presented by New Music Dublin.

Sponsored by RTÉ/ NCH/ Arts Council Ireland.