Galway Cathedral Recitals is delighted to announce its international summer concert season for 2022, the 29th series to take place in Galway Cathedral. As always, the concerts take place on Thursdays at 8:00pm over six weeks in July and early August.
“After two seasons online due to Covid, we’re delighted to be back presenting live music,” says Ray O’Donnell, Artistic Director of the series and organist at the cathedral.
“Organ playing tends in Irish people's minds to be associated with hymn accompaniment in church, and the wider world of organ repertoire and its performance is less well known, particularly here in the west of Ireland. The Cathedral is home to the finest symphonic instrument in the country, which beautifully handles a wide range of repertoire and styles.”
“Of course, by design the pipe organ is a fixed-position instrument. We can’t move it from its place in the church and bring it to audiences elsewhere, so instead we want to encourage audiences to come to hear it in the Cathedral. We keep our admission prices as reasonable as possible, and we’re always happy to do a deal on group admissions for students.”
Collegiality
“We have a long-standing partnership with Dún Laoghaire Organ Concerts: we collaborate to maximise performance opportunities for organists from Europe, the UK, the USA and Asia. This collegiality makes it affordable for both organisations to invite international artists of the highest calibre, and in turn makes it economically viable for those artists to visit Ireland.”
“We also have an arrangement with the high-profile bi-annual St Albans Organ Festival in the UK, where we offer an engagement to one of their competition winners. This relationship allows Galway Cathedral to take its place in an international network of organ-concert venues and helps to raise Galway's profile as a centre of performing arts.”
“As always, we’re presenting a mix of solo organ recitals along with other instruments and vocalists, from home and abroad. The series kicks off on Thursday 7th July with the exciting Amstel Saxophone Quartet from the Netherlands, along with Latvian organist Una Cinti?a. The ensemble will perform Songlessness, a major new work by Ukranian composer Maxim Shalygin, as well as music by Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt.”
“On 14 July, vocal group Peregryne and organist Jack Oades will bring to life the glories of Renaissance and Baroque music, in the form of large-scale vocal works from the English manuscript The Eton Choirbook (c.1500 ), along with organ music from France and Germany.”
“I’m playing our concert for 21st July, a very enjoyable programme of music from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries.”
“We’re very excited to present Kumi Choi, an outstanding young female organist from South Korea, winner of the St Albans Organ Competition in 2019, and her concert here on 28 July is part of her prize. We’re particularly happy to have two excellent female organists this year. Organ playing is inclined to be a male-dominated artistic endeavour, so it’s always good to improve the gender balance!”
Aleksandr Nisse, newly-appointed organist of St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, plays on 4 August, and on 11 August the series concludes with a special platform concert featuring a number of young musicians from the west of Ireland. Ranging in age from just 11 to early 20s, these young musicians are students of Athenry Music School, Coole Music & Arts, and NUI Galway’s Music Department.
Admission to each concert is €15 (concessions €12 ); tickets are available on Eventbrite and at the door. Full details of all performers and their programmes are available on the Galway Cathedral Recitals website: https://recitals.galwaycathedral.ie
