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This orchestra was founded
in 1948 as the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra in Ireland. It is one of two orchestras funded
by the Irish national broadcasting service and originally had just 22
members. Apart from occasional
public concerts it was almost wholly studio based for its first 30 years but
after the appointment of Proinnsias O'Duinn as principal conductor in
1978 it embarked on a successful North American tour and performed several
concert series at the newly opened National Concert Hall, gaining
international acclaim. The size
of the orchestra has grown in recent years to 45 contract players and they
have staged further North American tours using the title Spirit of Ireland, formed a partnership
with Opera Ireland and give regular school concerts nationwide. The RTE Sinfonietta is an ensemble
made up of a small number of their members, which is mainly used for
recording. It has appeared seven times as the orchestra for the Eurovision
Song Contest and has played at Gala Concerts with The Three Tenors and Dame
Kiri te Kanawa. The
orchestra's recordings are numerous and include three discs of rarely
heard Arthur Sullivan works, an opera by William Vincent Wallace, an album
of excerpted film recordings called Piano
Concertos from the Movies and the extremely successful Riverdance. Alongside these it has made several
recordings for the British Light Music series of recordings done by the
record label Marco Polo.
Richard Addinsell
recordings
Warsaw Concerto (Richard Addinsell)
Naxos 6 36943 43232 7 (CD:
Warsaw Concerto)
Conductor - Proinnsias O'Duinn
Piano - Philip Fowke
Sources:
- http://www.rte.ie/music/rteco/about.html
- http://www.naxos.com/orchestrainfo/182.htm
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