François-Frédéric Guy (piano), RTÉ NSO/Alan Buribayev

NCH, Dublin Tonight 8pm €10-€35 01-4170000

GALWAY EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL

Galway Fri-Sun 087-9305506

THOMAS HAMPSON (BARITONE), WOLFRAM RIEGER (PIANO)

NCH, Dublin Sun 8pm €30-€70 01-4170000

BARRY MCGOVERN, OWEN ROE (ACTORS), NATIONAL CHAMBER CHOIR, CRASH ENSEMBLE/ALAN PIERSON

IMMA, Dublin Sun 8pm €20

IVO POGORELICH (PIANO)

NCH, Dublin Wed 8pm €15-€45 01-4170000

It’s a super-busy weekend. The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra brings its subscription season to an end with another foretaste of the work of incoming principal conductor Alan Buribayev. On Friday he conducts a programme of Mozart (the Magic Flute Overture), Beethoven (the Emperor Piano Concerto with François-

Frédéric Guy) and Berlioz (the Symphonie fantastique).

The three-day Galway Early Music Festival also gets underway on Friday, with a programme which promises “medieval dance mania, card-playing gamblers, ecstatic religious visionaries, and love’s madness”.

Superstar baritone Thomas Hampson (pictured) picks up the thread of this year’s centenary celebrations of Samuel Barber, with an appearance at the NCH on Sunday; his all-American programme also includes songs by Foster, Copland, Bernstein, Rorem and Ives. And there’s an American clash with Hampson on Sunday, when Imma hosts performances of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel (with the National Chamber Choir), and the Beckett collaboration Words and Music (with actors Barry McGovern and Owen Roe).

Wednesday sees the return of Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich (whose career was famously launched by not making it into the finals of the 1980 Chopin Piano Competition), to play a programme of Chopin, Liszt, Sibelius and Ravel at the NCH.