This week, the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) announced the opening of its new concert venue, the Whyte Recital Hall, in September 2023, with a festival programme in collaboration with London’s Wigmore Hall. The 300-seat concert chamber will offer an intimate, world-class facility for chamber music audiences, and is set to transform Dublin’s classical music scene. A key element of RIAM’s ambitious €25m redevelopment programme on its Westland Row site, this announcement follows the reopening of teaching facilities in February.

Coinciding with the 175th anniversary of RIAM’s founding in 1848, the new hall will be opened to the public with an international festival curated in collaboration with Wigmore Hall director John Gilhooly. The festival will open with piano duo Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss, and will also include concerts by pianist Stephen Hough, the Schumann Quartet, star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason (with guitarist Plínio Fernandes), and soprano Regula Mühlemann.

Whyte Concert Hall – development image by Todd Architects

Introducing the festival, Deborah Kelleher, Director of the RIAM, said: “RIAM’s newly completed Whyte Recital Hall promises to be a performance venue of international repute. With that ambition in mind, I approached John Gilhooly for advice as to how we might make a strong opening artistic statement. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of his response, which was to connect us to some of the Wigmore Hall’s most exciting artists … allowing us to offer audiences an unforgettable debut season.”

Complementing the Wigmore Hall Festival is a series of ‘RIAM 175 Homecoming Concerts’ welcoming some of the Academy’s most distinguished alumni back to their musical alma mater, with recitals by Ailish Tynan, Robin Tritschler, Finghin Collins, Dearbhla Collins, and Celine Byrne.

For further information and tickets, see: riam.ie/whats-on