Two new compositions that are being premiered in Dublin this week (including Aontacht by David Flynn, commissioned by RTÉ for Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra) show that contemporary classical music can be gloriously accessible: Arminta Wallace in the Irish Times >>>
“What we’re doing here is different. It’s bringing two worlds together; taking ideas from the Irish tradition and merging them with a contemporary orchestration. Contemporary without being completely off the wall.” Is this music very different from what, and how, he usually plays? “There was a lot that was familiar,” he says. “But there was also a thing where it pushed me in ways, technically. A lot of third- and fourth-position playing, which doesn’t come up in traditional music very often. And the slow air is a complex piece of music with a lot of parts to it. You don’t learn it in one day, I can tell you that much.” “I wrote it in one day,” Flynn puts in. “Did you? It sounds like it,” Hayes retorts.
