Madam, - I write concerning the review of the Guinness Choir's spring concert at the NCH (Arts, April 16th). Your reviewer makes a point of commenting on the unusual bravery of the Guinness Choir in presenting a concert of works entirely by English composers, which, he says, are rarely programmed here. Courageous, certainly, and I thoroughly enjoyed their performance.
However, might I point out that only six weeks earlier, the Dún Laoghaire Choral Society presented Michael Tippet's A Child of Our Time, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music and Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, also in the NCH? Perhaps he was unaware of this concert, which was not reviewed in The Irish Times.
Furthermore, the Dun Laoghaire Choir presented another concert of English music last year, with Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and Stanford's Songs of the Fleet (though perhaps we should admit Stanford as an Irish composer). Is this choir not also courageous? - Yours, etc,
CHRIS STILLMAN, Thomastown Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.