Chamber orchestra opens season with Hayden, Bartok, Wagner

by Rose Rushe

HUNGARIAN maestro Gábor Tákacs Nagy opens the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s season with two of Haydn’s greatest symphonies in Dublin’s RDS on Thursday September 11 and again at University Concert Hall, Plassey on Friday 12, 8pm. Bartok and Wagner share the programme.
The Orchestra’s principal artistic partner Gábor Tákacs Nagy is Hungarian and an advocate for his country’s musical heritage. He considers Haydn to be part Hungarian as he was born so close to the border, spending many years there as court composer in Esterhazy.
Gábor’s approach is inspirational and the ICO share a certain synergy with him which is evident in their music-making.
“The conductor has to be a very good musician with lots of imaginative power….someone who not only knows musical rules but feels extremely strongly the human emotions that radiate from the score. Music is the language of emotions,” observes the conductor. “My experience is that if an orchestra knows that the musical ideas and feelings from the conductor are genuine and come from a warm heart, they will do what he wants”.
This month ICO performs two of his most memorable, the ‘London’ and ‘Clock’ symphonies.
Other greats are in the mix for this week’s concerts.
“In Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, a birthday gift to his wife, Wagner manages to create utterly beautiful shades of tones by using clever combinations of orchestra,” comments Charlotte Eglington, orchestra marketing office. “Bartok’s String Quartet No. I has echoes of Wagner in the featured first movement Lento which reflect on Bartók’s personal life, a composer at the sunset of Romanticism”.
Book at www.uch.ie or direct from box office at University Concert Hall.