Soprano Charlotte a highlight for celebration of Beethoven

Galway audiences will get a rare chance to hear songs of Beethoven performed in the city next weekend as part of Music for Galway’s Mid-Winter Festival.

The event, which celebrates the life of the German composer whose letters were translated by UCG graduate and German professor Emily Anderson in the mid 20th century, runs from Friday, January 25 to Sunday January 28 at the Town Hall Theatre.

Dutch soprano Charlotte Riedijlk will play a central part in this event, performing on Friday night with fellow Dutch musicians, The Osiris Trio and with Ellen Corver and Rebecca ?ápová on piano, cellist Larissa Groeneveld and Paul Roe on clarinet. That event, entitled Genius explores Beethoven’s work from his early compositions to his final piano piece.

On Sunday, Charlotte will be in concert with the Osiris Trio and with Rebecca ?ápová, as well as with Irish tenor Robin Tritschler and Galway based actor Rod Goodall to explore Beethoven’s Irish connections.

This is her first time to perform in Galway although she has been a regular at Bantry’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival in previous years and it was in Bantry she met Music for Galway’s Artistic Director, Jane O’Leary.

Charlotte has a busy schedule as an opera singer and has worked with some of the top conductors and ensembles in Europe. But, when it comes to performing chamber music, she loves to perform with the Osiris Trio and works with them a lot. As well as singing works from the classical repertoire Charlotte has performed work written for her by contemporary composers at the Holland Festival, Graz, Frankfurt, Finland, and at the Stockholm New Music Festival.

“I have a connection with modern music and people write stuff for me,” she says modestly.

But in Galway she’ll definitely be drawing from the classics, although in an area that’s not so well known because Beethoven’s songs aren’t performed as much as Schubert’s or Schumann’s, she says.

So, for her Music for Galway performances, Charlotte set about collecting a set of his songs to perform.

“I’ve tried to pick a set with different songs – simple ones and more complex ones,” she explains. “There are so many aspects to them and I only knew of a couple of them before.”

Galway audiences will definitely be treated to some new material.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.