Latest news with #RoyalIrishAcademy
Irish Independent
02-07-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
Claire Connolly: ‘Think Miranda July's All Fours but set between late 19-century Dublin, Bray and Connemara...'
Claire Connolly is professor of modern English at University College Cork, and the Arts, Humanities and Social Science Secretary for the Royal Irish Academy. With Marjorie Howes, she edited the six volume series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-2020. She has written the prefaces for the new editions of Somerville and Ross's Experiences of an Irish RM and The Real Charlotte and will be at the West Cork Literary Festival on July 13, 3pm in Marino Church..
Irish Times
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Kristian Bezuidenhout/Irish Chamber Orchestra review: Interpretative quirks too often interrupt Beethoven piano concertos' natural flow
Kristian Bezuidenhout/Irish Chamber Orchestra Whyte Recital Hall, RIAM, Dublin ★★★☆☆ It's all change at the Irish Chamber Orchestra. The Austrian violinist and conductor Thomas Zehetmair is being succeeded as artistic partner by the Norwegian violinist and composer Henning Kraggerud in September. And the South African-born keyboard player and conductor Kristian Bezuidenhout, who trained in Australia and the US and now lives in London, has been named the orchestra's associate artist. (Those job titles are so confusing that the orchestra's website also refers to Bezuidenhout its 'current Artist in Association'.) Bezuidenhout is no stranger to Ireland, having first performed here as a teenager back in 1998. He made his first appearances with the ICO in 2006, when he played both harpsichord and piano in concertos by Hertel and Mozart. His current ICO project is a cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos, directed from the keyboard, using a lidless Steinway concert grand. Tonight he plays the second and fourth concertos. Bezuidenhout is one of those players who bring the sensitivities and concerns of the world of period performance style to their work with modern instruments. In the dry acoustic of the Royal Irish Academy of Music's Whyte Recital Hall this makes for performances of great clarity and immediacy, though the textures do at times become a little cluttered, so that the strongest instruments are allowed to overpower those of lighter tone. His piano playing matches the high energy and vivid communication of his conducting. His approach is so articulate that intricate score markings that are often hardly discernible in performance can stand out with the musical equivalent of perfect elocution. We're talking here about the slurring of pairs of notes in rapid passages, the impeccable cleanness of virtuosic flourishes, and a general feeling in fast movements of high spirits unimpeded by stress. READ MORE In my experience Bezuidenhout's approach sometimes lean towards a kind of interpretative detailing that can seem intrusive. This can go beyond the often stimulating hits and misses from added embellishments, whether spontaneous or premeditated, into areas that can seem hard to justify based on what's in the composers' scores. The balancing of these issues is altogether more persuasive in the Second Piano Concerto than in the Fourth, where the orchestra is prone to sound too pressured, and Bezuidenhout's fondness for spaced-out arpeggiation is inflicted even on the poise of the solo piano phrase that opens this work. Bezuidenhout is not the first player to arpeggiate the opening chord. On disc the practice can be traced back at least as far as Steven Lubin's 1987 recording with the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood. And the idea seems to have originated with the Beethoven pupil Carl Czerny, who proposed it in the mid-19th century, some decades after the composer's death. In the ICO performance it is definitely a case of 'Tain't What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It), with Bezuidenhout's interpretative quirks too often interrupting the natural flow of the music in spite of the otherwise often refined delivery.
Irish Post
10-06-2025
- Science
- Irish Post
Archaeologists discover the first fully intact Roman pottery in north Dublin
IRELAND'S history may not be written in stone after all. A team of archaeologists working at a coastal site in north County Dublin has made a discovery that is being hailed as a milestone in Irish archaeology: the first fully intact Roman pot ever uncovered on the island. The find was made at the Drumanagh promontory fort near the village of Loughshinny. Christine Baker, Fingal County Council's Heritage Officer and lead archaeologist on the excavation, described the moment of discovery as extraordinary. 'We're breathless with the sheer excitement of it all,' she said in a statement. 'This is the first time a complete Roman pot has been excavated in Ireland. We've found fragments before, amphora necks, shards, but nothing like this.' Though the Roman Empire never conquered lands in Ireland, this discovery adds to growing evidence of cross-cultural trade. 'While there's no indication of a Roman settlement here,' Baker said, 'we're seeing clear signs of sustained contact. Trade, influence, maybe even a Roman presence overseeing commerce, it's all beginning to take shape through what we're uncovering.' Drumanagh, which lies on a 46-acre headland fortified by earthen ramparts, has drawn a lot of interest in recent years over its geographic and historic significance. Yet, only in recent years have scientific excavations taken place. The Digging Drumanagh project, which began in 2018, aims to uncover the site's historical layers with help from the local community. In its first excavation season in 2018, archaeologists discovered Iron Age deposits and human remains from the late prehistoric period, suggesting activity at the site hundreds of years before Roman contact. Since then, annual digs have revealed signs of textile and craft production and dozens of Roman pottery fragments alongside Roman-British artefacts such as glass beads and vessels. Recent digs have also uncovered grain-storage pits later used as refuse dumps and a variety of bone tools. One particularly exciting find was a Roman-style die. In 2024, during post-excavation analysis, another rare item was found: a charred fig, initially mistaken for a small apple. Later confirmed by archaeobotanist Professor Meriel McClatchie, the 2,000-year-old fruit is the earliest known example of an exotic Roman import to Ireland. Figs, which were often dried before being transported, were a staple in a Roman's diet. Its discovery offers further proof of Roman goods reaching Irish shores through their vast trade networks. The newly found intact pot has been moved to the National Museum of Ireland, where conservation work and further analysis continue. Dr. John Waddell, an expert in Irish archaeology and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, wrote in a blog post, 'This discovery at Drumanagh is a game-changer. It provides tangible evidence of Roman presence and influence in Ireland, not just through trade goods but through the artefacts themselves.' The ancient fig discovered at the site (Photo by Fingal County Council)
