NEWS

 

FINGHIN TO PERFORM AT THE BBC PROMS 2008

23rd May 2008

On Thursday August 7th 2008 Finghin will take to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in London for a performance of the Second Piano Concerto by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford with the Ulster Orchestra conducted by their Principal Conductor Kenneth Montgomery. This concert will mark Finghin's debut at the BBC Proms, the biggest classical music festival in the world.

Stanford was born in Dublin in 1852 and, as well as being a very respected and prolific composer, was an exacting and influential professor, counting among his pupils Holst, Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge and Herbert Howells; indeed he has been called the most important single factor in the renaissance of English music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2002 Finghin marked the 150th anniversary of his birth by performing his Second Piano Concerto with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerhard Markson at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.

The Second Piano Concerto in C minor Op. 126 is a great sweeping Romantic work full of grandiose melodies, dramatic exchanges and exhilarating virtuosity. Though at the start it seems to clearly recall Rachmaninov's Second Concerto in the same key, it soon assumes its own identity and is without doubt an unduly neglected work. The Proms performance will surely help to put it in the international spotlight where it belongs.

The rest of the Ulster Orchestra concert under the baton of the dynamic Montgomery includes Howard Ferguson's Overture for an Occasion, Smetana's Ma Vlast and Dvorak's Symphony No. 8.

All Proms are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Full details of the entire Proms line-up and booking details at the BBC website.