Two classical music concerts to see in Ireland this week

Sunday, July 8th

David Leigh
St Michael's Church, Dún Laoghaire; 8pm; €12; dunlaoghaireorganconcerts.ie
David Leigh's programme for St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire, follows the well-established convention of beginning with the earliest work and ending with the latest. The artistic director of the Pipeworks festival and assistant organist at Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral opens with a generous offering of Bach (including the substantial Partita on Sei gegrüsset, Jesu Gütig), follows with 20th-century music from Germany (Hindemith's First Organ Sonata from the 1930s), some later pieces from France (a 1940s Esquisse by Dupré and a 1960s Toccata by Guillou) and then jumps into the 21st century for Iain Farrington's jazzy Live Wire of 2008.

Tuesday, July 10th

RTÉ NSO/Timothy Henty
NCH, Dublin; 1.05pm; nch.ie
A hundred years ago the classical music world was still in the throes of a Wagner boom. Arrangements were everywhere, and bleeding chunks from the composer's operas were de rigueur in the world of orchestras. In 2010, when the BBC Proms launched its online archive, Wagner was still the festival's most performed composer. He had amassed 4,685 performances to the second-placed Beethoven's 2,733 over the then total tally of 7,168 concerts. Timothy Henty's RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra lunchtime concert harks back to those earlier times by opening with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, and following with O du mein holder Abendstern from Tannhäuser, sung leading Irish baritone Gavan Ring. Ring also sings in a Rossini pairing in which the overture to The Barber of Seville is followed by one of the opera's most famous numbers, the Largo al factotum. Also on this programme of evergreens are Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 and the Dance of the Comedians from Smetana's The Bartered Bride.