The remembrance of World War I a hundred years ago and of the end of World War II seventy years ago picks War and Peace out as a central theme of most different artistic projects in many places. This years’s Festival at the Irish city of Clonmel presents its opening concert under the baton of Elisabeth Attl on July 3rd, 2015 intentionally unlimited in both geographic and stylistic sense.
Joined by local vocal soloists and the RTÉ ConTempo Quartet, the Festival Choir performs a programme which includes music by Beethoven, Britten, Fauré and Shostakovitch next to songs by John Lennon, Irish and British war-songs and a world-premiere of the Austrian composer Wolfgang Sauseng. Elisabeth Attl, the de facto music director of Clonmel in Ireland, already conducted masses by Schubert and Haydn as well as a performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice there receiving thundering applause by audience and press. Irish choir tradition and Austrian musical accurateness - obviously a best possible match!