Three works of Irish classical music – never before performed in the Republic of Ireland – will receive their premieres at the University of Galway’s Emily Anderson Hall.

Northern Ireland’s Fews Ensemble will give the ROI premiers of Hamilton Harty’s unjustly overlooked Piano Quintet in F major, and, with soprano Máire Flavin, of new works by contemporary Belfast composers Ian Wilson and Brian Connor. The concert takes place on Saturday 5th October at 7.30pm and to complete this night of debut performances, it will also mark the first time The Fews Ensemble – the resident ensemble of Newry Mourne and Down and Newry Chamber Music – has played in the West of Ireland. Indeed, this concert will be a celebration of Irish classical music, past and present, a chance to experience the new and to revive the forgotten.

Though he enjoyed a largely successful career, particularly as a conductor, the music of Co Down composer, Hamilton Harty, has been neglected in the 21st century. The Fews Ensemble are seeking to change that through their performance of Harty’s 1904 work, the Piano Quintet in F major, Op. 12. The Fews Ensemble gave the work its first performance in Ireland in 2023 in Belfast. The Galway performance will mark its first airing south of the border. Joanne Quigley McParland, Fews Ensemble Artistic Director, has called it “a fascinating work and full of gorgeous folk-inspired melodies”, while the noted musicologist, Professor Jeremy Dibble, of Durham University, praised the Quintet as “a bold, big-boned, passionate work of symphonic proportions” which “stands happily beside those large-scale Romantic utterances of Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák”.

Another significant ROI premiere will be Ian Wilson’s Passerine Night (2023) for soprano and ensemble, inspired by a nightingale’s song, heard by the composer during the first two months of lockdown in 2020. “I have in mind one specific night: a starlit sky, the absence of human noise, the nightingale singing for hours,” said Wilson. “I went out into the garden and the experience was beautiful, memorable, and moving. I wanted to create an artistic response to that memorable evening as a reminder that even in the midst of something terrible, something beautiful can be found.”

This performance will be conducted by Galway’s Sinead Hayes, the Britten Pears Young Artist for 2023/24 and conductor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra. The third ROI premiere will be of Brian Connor’s Three Irish Songs in new arrangements – ‘My Lagan Love’, ‘The Month of January’, and ‘The Star of the County Down’. The concert will also feature a performance of Phantasy Trio, by Fermanagh composer Joan Trimble. The Fews Ensemble is Joanne Quigley McParland and Tom Jackson (violins), Rose Redgrave (viola), Jonathan Aasgaard (cello), Gareth Hopkins (bass), Francesco Paolo Scola (clarinet) and David Quigley (piano). They have won acclaim for both the quality of their playing and their innovative programme, which includes commissions by Irish composers and chamber version arrangements of larger-scale orchestral works.