Scrutinise Anthony Long’s claim a little deeper and you’ll see a much deeper problem with the N.S.O. repertoire planning.
Towards 2022 is focused not just on Irish music, but also music with “links to” our rich and underexplored classical music heritage.
Gerard Victory, whose Three Irish Pictures, opened Friday’s programme, studied with Alan Rawsthorne and also attended the DarmstadtSchool in Germany. John Field, whose Sixth Piano Concerto was dispatched with finesse by Alessandro Taverna, taught Mikhail Glinka, the first Russian composer of note.The great composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni, who died in 1924, had been planning to get a Field revival under way in the 1920s.
In the context of Victory’s limited training – he was mostly self-taught – it’s interesting to see where the international connections of other Irish composers lie. Seóirse Bodley, now in his mid-80s, studied in Stuttgart with Johann Nepomuk David.
Frank Corcoran, who turns 75 this year, studied in Berlin with Boris Blacher.