The Real Rocky

This weekend sees the release of Stallone’s long-promised Rocky Balboa. And in Dublin on Friday night, around 100 people queued patiently to see Rocky and friends, despite the fact that the place was full, with all 1,200 tickets sold out since the start of the week, and the staff were at pains to point out that few of us would get in.

‘Twas a different Rocky were were after, though. The sell-out and the unexpected queue was for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra featuring Irish pianist Hugh Tinney playing Rachmaninov’s very well-known Second Piano Concerto. The conductor was also of this island, Gavin Maloney (born, scarily, in the same year as this author) and as a Hibernobonus, the first work was a world premiere of ‘Four Orchestral Pieces’ by local composer Kevin O’Connell of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. (For the record, the third piece was Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition).

I was lucky enough to be admitted at the last minute, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. (Will add links to reviews etc here when available, as I’m not a great reviewer!)