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St. Patrick’s Day Celebrated by Concert of Irish Music (video)

On Thursday 17 March, St. Patrick’s Day – a national Irish holiday becoming more and more popular all over the world – was spectacularly celebrated at Master Klass. The concert of Irish classical music “Music of the Emerald Island”, performed by the orchestra Collegium Kiev and Jonathan Powell, a pianist-virtuoso from Great Britain, was held on stage of the Culture and Education Centre that day.

By lucky coincidence, Paul Henry, the conductor of the orchestra and Frank McGovern, the organizer of the concert and director of culture programmes at Master Klass, are both Irishmen. Moreover, Mr Powell turned out to have Welsh and Irish roots, too (calling himself an Englishman, though).

All in all, there were five Ukrainian premiers – Frederic Chopin’s compositions and pieces of music by Irish composers such as Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Charles Stanford and John Field.

Mr Powell, accompanied by the orchestra, performed John Field’s “Piano Concert no. 2” and Frederic Chopin’s “Fantasy on Polish Airs for Piano and Orchestra”, the latter being the only non-Irish piece of music to be performed that evening. Chopin’s music was included into the programme due to the fact that it was John Field who influenced the peculiarities of the Polish composer’s style. These peculiarities are demonstrated by the very “Fantasy on Polish Airs for Piano and Orchestra”, performed in the second part of the concert.

– “Field used to live in Russia in the first half of the 19th century and had a great influence on the development of music in this area, including Ukraine,” said Mr Powell in his interview before the concert. According to Mr Powell, Field’s name is known to a number of pianists. However, they do not often hear his music, as if he lived in Chopin’s shadow.

Another surprise of the concert was hidden in Stanford’s “Irish Rhapsody no. 1”, which is the motive “Londonerry Air” or “Danny Boy” – an unofficial Irish anthem. Having been performed as part of “Irish Rhapsody” first, this melody was played again as a final number of the concert. However (and it was another big surprise), the vocalist Lyubov Sagat appeared on stage to sing in her lyric soprano the world-famous words which have been inspiring musicians of different genres for hundreds of years:

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the leaves are falling
‘Tis you,  ‘tis you must go and I must bide.

The audience was even more surprised when Paul Henry asked the musicians to play the song for the second time and the audience to sing along with Lyubov Sagat, looking at their theatre programmes with lyrics to the song. This conductor’s idea raised the mood of all the musicians and guests of the evening.

    Video of the concert: