Frank Corcoran

Frank Corcoran has just been commissioned by the Irish Arts Council to compose a new concerto for

CLARINET AND STRINGS

for 2019 New York premiere by North South Orchestra / Max Lifchitz .

The Mornington Singers and conductor Orla Flanagan present a programme of contemporary choral music from Ireland, including the premieres of two new works: “To the Northeast” by John Buckley (commissioned by Mornington Singers with the support of the Arts Council of Ireland) and “World War 1 Letters” by Ben Hanlon.
The concert will also include the launch of the choir’s new CD Under-Song and will perform a number of pieces from the album.
Programme includes:

Rhona Clarke Regina Caeli
Eoghan Desmond O most merciful
Colin Mawby Alleluia Christus resurrexit
Ben Hanlon World War 1 Letters (premiere)
Mark Armstrong Dreaming
Seán Doherty Under-Song
Éna Brennan L’Étranger
John Buckley To the Northeast (premiere)
Caitríona Ní Dhubhghaill An raibh tú ar an gcarraig?
Frank Corcoran Caoine

Mihi placet latine ? ( Lingua Latinorum erat alienatio secunda ; prima erat Teanga na nGael – etiam lingua linguarum atque lingua hebreorum et Dei )

” Nocteque puellas ” – sed verum est timor mortis ( conturbantis me ) et timor puellarum et timor inferorum et timor matris et timor patris et timor

ceterorum apud Scholam Borrisokanensem et ceterorum et linguarum et

mundi tonorum.

Cras tantae syllabae et sonorum . De urbe urbarum et confusionis . Stercorum . Lucris lucrarum. De Inferis inferorum Romanorum.

Corcoran Mad Sweeney
Another opportunity to get to know one of the most distinctive voices in Irish contemporary music, Frank Corcoran
Show View record and artist details
Author:
Michael Stewart
Corcoran Mad Sweeney

Mad Sweeney
Music for the Book of Kells
Wind Quintet
Sweeney’s Vision for tape

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Hard on the heels of Marco Polo’s issue of symphonies by Frank Corcoran – reviewed above – comes another disc of music by this fascinating composer. Corcoran, who was born in Tipperary in 1944, is a name in contemporary music who has eluded me until the appearance of the disc of the symphonies, and on the evidence of that disc I would certainly rank him as a major discovery of last year. He probably wouldn’t thank me for the comparison, but the best way to characterise his style might be to call him the Maxwell Davies of Ireland. I found the symphonies powerful, original and highly organic in structure. Black Box’s new disc offers us the chance to explore some of his music for smaller ensembles, as well as a remarkably atmospheric piece for tape.
Mad Sweeney for speaker and chamber orchestra is a setting of Seamus Heaney’s translation of an early Irish text about a 7th-century king from northern Ireland who went mad at the battle of Maigh Rath in AD 637, and who thereafter spent the rest of his life living wild as a fugitive and outcast. The Sprechgesang-style speaking part is delivered here in fine dramatic fashion by Corcoran himself, and this is marvellously entwined within the complex musical argument provided by the chamber orchestra. I was continually drawn back to this piece and found much to discover on repeated hearings. Less gripping, I thought, was the percussion piece Music for the Book of Kells which Corcoran describes as ‘a terse musical discourse’ and as ‘not programmatic but rather an abstract structure in its own right’. The trouble with ‘abstract’ percussion music of this kind is that it can have a tendency to dilute a composer’s individuality.
The Wind Quintet is in some ways a rather enigmatic, though nevertheless fascinating and thought-provoking piece that almost demands repeated hearings in order to penetrate its surface. It uses a technique which Corcoran calls ‘macro-counterpoint’ and seems to have a fascination with the opening phrase from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring which is quoted early on and thereafter hinted at throughout. Described by Corcoran as ‘a four-movement, late-20th-century electronic symphony’, Sweeney’s Vision is a subtle and highly effective tape piece, which I would say successfully encapsulates Corcoran’s ideas about ‘mythic sound’ and ‘Irish dream landscape’. Superb performances and excellent recorded sound – Corcoran fans will not bedisappointed.’

April 27 2017 Gravesend Woodville Theatre

The Italian virtuoso , Luigi De Filippi, ( from the VOCES INTIMAE Piano Trio ) in a programme of Isaye,

Corcoran and Bach gives the English premiere

of Frank Corcoran’s 7 Miniatures For Violin Solo.

PRESS RELEASE
Rhapsodic Celli: The Music of Frank Corcoran
CD Release June 2017
Soloist Martin Johnson explores Frank Corcoran’s writing for cello in all its nuances, from the swagger of a concerto and the rhapsodic polyphony of his work for eight cellos through to composer’s arrangements of folk tunes for cello and piano informed by the rhythmic patois of the Irish language.
Frank Corcoran has lived and taught in Germany for most of his professional life but has retained a profound connection with the literature and traditional music of his native country. It is this distance from and relationship with Ireland that informs so much of his music: directly, as in the case his short Rhapsodietta Joyceana for solo cello and, more subtly, in the tensile interplay between soloist and orchestra in his first Cello Concerto.
Nowhere is this sense of place more evident, however, than in Corcoran’s Duetti Irlandesi for Cello and Piano which pay homage to the distant musical ancestor, the master harper Floirint Ó Corcorain. These traditional melodies would originally have been played on the Irish harp and the Composer says, “…have been haunting me since my rural childhood in Tipperary. I had long been appalled by the settings of old Irish melodies attempted by Beethoven, Haydn, Britten, Harty and too many other well-meaning composers: their often saccharine harmonies, their rhythmic iron corsets or indeed the foursquare form too often adopted.” Instead, Corcoran has incorporated the freer sean nós or old-style singing rhythms and grace notes into his classically informed settings of these tunes so they become “… historical miniatures of my vanished Ireland.”
Rhapsodic Celli will be launched at The Hugh Lane Gallery Sundays@Noon concert, Parnell Square North, Dublin 1 on 4th June.
The RTÉ lyric fm label is dedicated to promoting Irish musicians and composers worldwide. Our CDs have been critically acclaimed nationally and internationally from Australia to Germany and the United States of America.
Title: Rhapsodic Celli: The Music of Frank Corcoran
Distributor: Ireland: Beaumex
www.beaumex.ie
UK: Discovery Records LTD www.discovery-records.com
Online: iTunes and Spotify
Cat. No: CD154
File Under: Classical
RRP: €12.99
Barcode: 5 391507 331113 Web: http://www.rte.ie/lyriclabel
For

” IL CONCERTO DI DUBLINO ”

Pratoleva Trio

PROGRAMMA

27. Maggio 2017 Irish Embassy, Rome 18.00

28. Maggio 2017 Bolsena Piccolo Teatro Cavour 18.00

Achille Simonetti : “Allegro Romantico ” per Viola e Pianoforte

Frank Corcoran : ” Duetti Irlandesi ” per Violoncello e Pianoforte

“Im Aonar Seal ”
“Sean O Duibhir An Ghleanna”
“Roisin Dubh”

Alfredo Piatti Caprice Nr. 4 per Violoncello Solo

Jane O’Leary “As If One ” Duetto per Viola e Violoncello

Olivier Messiaen “Premiere Communion de la Vierge” da Vingt Regards sur L’ Enfant Jesus

Dermot McDermot “A Peace Worth Willing” per Violoncello, Pianoforte e EBows

Frank Corcoran PIANO TRIO ( prima esecuzione assoluta – world premiere ! ! )

Girolamo Frescobaldi “Toccata per Violoncello e Pianoforte ( arr. Cassado )

Subject: Frank Corcoran HUGH LANE DUBLIN Concert on June 4.

4 Duetti Irlandesi for Cello and Piano:

( Im Aonar Seal, Sean O Duibhir an Ghleanna , Roisin Dubh, A Mhairin De Barra , )

Piano Trio ( World Premiere )

Viola solo ( Var.s on ” A Mhairin de Barra ” )

Solo cello Rhapsodietta Joyceana

and CD launch ” Rhapsodic Celli ”

( Programme as in Rome, May 27. and Bolsena , May 28. )

Sent: Tue, Jul 21, 2015 6:26 pm
Subject: Re: ADDITION Frank Corcoran’s July and August Italian Concerts

Hello Frank,

I have posted this story.

New works by Frank Corcoran performed in Italy this summer

CORCORAN Frank.

Ireland.

I participated in the IMEB Competition 1999. My ” SWEENEY´S VISION ” ( 1997 WDR Cologne Commission ) was awarded a Premier Prix.

IMEB Competition was

EXCELLENTLY conceived and administered. It contributed GREATLY to my career as a composer !

It is a shame on the French Ministry of Culture to withdraw vital support from IMEB and to force it to
close this July 2011. IMEB was foremost in its field; a flag-ship for French musical culture and for
international electronic music in all its many facets.
A great shame for this great cultural nation.