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RTE Concert Orchestra

This orchestra was founded in 1948 as the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra in Ireland which is one of two orchestras funded by the Irish national broadcasting service that 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:

  1. http://www.rte.ie/music/rteco/about.html
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT%C3%89_Concert_Orchestra
  3. http://www.naxos.com/orchestrainfo/182.htm