A new CD of music by Seóirse Bodley will be launched at the first RTÉ NSO Horizons Concert of 2009.

Newly installed as Saoi of Aosdána, Seóirse Bodley is to be the featured composer in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Horizons Concert at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on Tuesday 13 January. The event will also see the launch of a new recording of three orchestral works by the composer in a joint venture between RTÉ and the Arts Council.

The free lunchtime concert (beginning at 1.05pm) will include Bodley's Never to Have Lived is Best, Meditations on Lines from Patrick Kavanagh and 'Cuchulainn', the fifth movement from I Have Loved the Lands of Ireland, and his Second Symphony, alongside Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks. Soprano Sylvia O'Brien and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Colman Pearce.

A pre-concert talk featuring the composer begins at 12.30pm.

The Second Symphony, together with the Symphony No 1 for chamber orchestra and A Small White Cloud Drifts Over Ireland, are the featured works on the CD, issued on the RTÉ label. Robert Houlihan will conduct the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

The recording is the second release in a five-year, 10-disc agreement between RTÉ and the Arts Council that began in January 2008 with a CD of music by Raymond Deane.

Seóirse Bodley's new CD will be available from the CMC Shop shortly.

Posted: 22 December 2008