NSOI: Season Finale – Wolfe, Rachmaninov & Adams

National Symphony Orchestra Ireland
Stephanie Childress, conductor
Nicolas Namoradze, piano
National Symphony Chorus Ireland
David Young chorus director

Julia Wolfe Pretty (Irish Premiere)
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2
John Adams Harmonium 

A sensational Season Finale offers two defining contemporary American voices, Pulitzer Prize winners Julia Wolfe and John Adams, framing an iconic Romantic masterpiece.

National Symphony Orchestra Ireland partners with the ‘seriously exciting’ (Operissima) Stephanie Childress, ‘astonishing’ (International Piano) Nicolas Namoradze, and National Symphony Chorus Ireland.

Premiered by Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic in 2023, the Irish premiere of Julia Wolfe’s bracing Pretty introduces ‘a raucous celebration… inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll’ that takes to task notions of feminine beauty in no uncertain terms.

John Adams’ Harmonium is a resounding choral symphony inspired by the poetry of John Donne and Emily Dickinson. A modern masterpiece fusing minimalist rhythmic pulses with lush, shifting harmonies and dramatic text settings, it offers a mesmerising journey through love, mortality, and ecstatic release.

Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is an emotional tour de force, a musical tempest, a compelling outpouring of a heart in conflict. Its Adagio middle movement made famous by David Lean’s 1945 film, Brief Encounter, its rippling, resonant melody was also borrowed by Frank Sinatra for Full Moon and Empty Arms and Eric Carmen for his 1975 power-ballad hit, All By Myself.

Presented by NCH