Land of Winter
Dennehy’s shrewd, sensitive ear for timbre is a large part of what makes Land of Winter such enveloping listening. Just as important, though, is the ingenious way that his overtone-rich harmony and use of refrains conveys both cyclicality and change… By the time we arrive at November — granitic and slow, and with allusions to a Bach chorale — we are back where we began the winter’s journey, and yet time also seems to have moved ineluctably, even a bit sadly, forward...Mesmerizing" – New York Times
‘A beautifully crafted portrait of landscape and seasons from Dennehy, his sound world compellingly caught by modern music specialists Alarm Will Sound. Land of Winter offers further proof, if it were required, that Dennehy is Ireland’s most significant composer to have emerged since Gerald Barry.’ – Gramophone, Editor's Choice.
The Hunger
Release date: August 23, 2019. Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger—out on Nonesuch Records—explores Ireland's Great Famine. Performed by Alarm Will Sound led by Alan Pierson, soprano Katherine Manley, and sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, the libretto draws from first-hand accounts by American humanitarian Asenath Nicholson. The Hunger "bears hearing and rehearing," said the Washington Post. "It is powerful, and it makes a statement." Pre-order to download the album track "Black Potatoes" now.
Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance
Release date: June 28, 2019. New Amsterdam Records will release Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s album Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance on June 28, 2019. The album is named for the two single-movement compositions featured on the recording -- “Surface Tension,” which is performed by Chicago-based, Grammy-winning percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion, and “Disposable Dissonance,” which is performed by the Dublin-based and internationally renowned Crash Ensemble, which Dennehy founded.
Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance opens with “Surface Tension”, which was inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s historic percussion collection. Dennehy explains, “I was inspired by the way various indigenous drums (such as the Irish bodhrán or Middle Eastern frame drums like the Turkish Tar) play with the tension of the skin in order to bend the pitch and produce something almost approaching melody, and sought a way of making so-called un-pitched drums ‘sing’ in their own way in this piece.” He continues,” I was particularly interested in creating a kind of mobile pitch-space that shifted in and out of various overtone-based tonalities.”
The Last Hotel
Release date: 15 March 2019. Reviewing the world premiere in Edinburgh of composer Donnacha Dennehy and playwright Enda Walsh’s opera The Last Hotel, The Guardian’s Kate Molleson was smitten by “a dark drama in which death hangs over every move – the titular hotel is a shabby establishment where guests go to kill themselves.”
That description alone is all the listener needs to appreciate the visceral energy of the performances captured here by Claudia Boyle, Robin Adams, Katherine Manley and actor Mikel Murfi (whose presence as the silent Porter is more implied than directly felt), all ably supported by the agile, dynamic sound of Ireland’s renowned Crash Ensemble, conducted by Alan Pierson.
“It’s great to work with someone like Enda, who’s a genius in his own field,” Dennehy observed in an interview shortly before the premiere. “The opera is about an English couple who arrive in Ireland to meet this Irish woman, and basically as it goes on, you realize that the Irish woman wants to kill herself, with their assistance. But it’s incredibly funny in places, despite the tragic subject matter.”
In the true spirit of modern musical theater, which has consistently pushed against the boundaries of what constitutes “opera” in the traditional Western classical sense, The Last Hotel merges the grit and gall of experimental theater and independent arthouse films with the crackling trajectory of post-classical chamber music. It’s a multivalent work that reunites Dennehy and Walsh, two of Ireland’s leading creative lights, in a collaborative triumph that recalls the poignancy and power of their work together on Walsh’s Misterman, which starred actor Cillian Murphy and garnered rave reviews in Galway, London and New York.
Tessellatum (Nadia Sirota/Liam Byrne, Bedroom Community)
Release date: 11 August 2017. 38 minute piece (divided into 3 continuous sections) for solo viola, 3 "ghost" violas and 11 microtonally tuned viols. Written especially for Nadia Sirota and Liam Byrne, who recorded it at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik.
"I am obsessed with luminosity in music”, says Dennehy on the album's website. “It influences most of my decisions: about harmony and timbre, process and even form.” This obsession, one that drove Sirota to originally commission the piece, has resulted in the extreme and innovative utilisation of overtones in Tessellatum, and is what gives the piece its singular, incandescent quality. It might urge us to at least entertain the idea of listening to musical sound in an entirely different way", Aidan Daly, The Line of the Best Fit, 8 August 2017 (Album of the week)
"On this luminous 38-minute work by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, Sirota leads a viola quartet of herself, quadruple-tracked, while Liam Byrne layers 11 tracks of viola de gamba. Together they generate dense harmonic clouds that move around birdlike melodic phrases, which by turn crisscross, then flock to formation. The piece is best experienced as soundtrack to Steven Merten's psychedelic companion film, though it's plenty consciousness-altering on its own.", Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 11 August 2017.
Donnacha Dennehy: Grá Agus Bás (Nonesuch Records)
Debut release of Donnacha Dennehy's music on Nonesuch Records. Release date: 3 May 2011. Tracks are Grá Agus Bás and That The Night Come. Features Dawn Upshaw, Iarla O'Lionáird and Crash Ensemble (conducted by Alan Pierson).
"Remarkable", "startling freshness" 5***** Andrew Clements, The Guardian
Editor's Choice, Gramophone, August 2011
Orchestral Works (RTE Lyric FM)
Premiere recordings of the following orchestral works: Crane, O, The Vandal, and Hive. Performed by National Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir Ireland. Released October 2014.
"The sheer range of Dennehy’s music is hugely impressive" The Guardian
You can check out an in-depth discussion of the disc by Ivan Hewett on BBC's CD Review here.
"Each of these four works is a unique reflection of the creative brilliance of their author, and a harbinger of great things to come" Jeffrey Zeigler, Q2 Music Review, WQXR New York
Elastic Harmonic (NMC)
The first full-length portrait CD of Donnacha Dennehy's music. Released by NMC in London in June 2007. Tracks include Elastic Harmonic, Streetwalker, Junk Box Fraud, PADDY, pAt and Glamour Sleeper. Performers include Crash Ensemble, Joanna MacGregor, Darragh Morgan, National Symphony Orchestra, Tatiana Koleva, and Ensemble Intégrales.
Link to the following online reviews from allmusic.com and JMI.
Stainless Staining (Cantaloupe)
The third in Lisa Moore's series of EPs for Cantaloupe, Stainless Staining is devoted to the piano music of Donnacha Dennehy. Consists of the two pieces, Stainless Staining and Reservoir. Release date: July 2012.
From the November 2012 American Edition of Gramophone: "Dennehy creates sonorities at once glistening and hypnotic...Every moment is suffused with delicate or dramatic propulsion... Lisa Moore, founding pianist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, plays both works with mesmerising command of Dennehy's simmering soundscapes and finely graded dynamic palette". Donald Rosenberg
Bracing Change (NMC)
Contains the premiere recording of The Weather of it (2016) in a disc of string quartets performed by the Doric Quartet, the Jack Quartet, and the Carducci Quartet. Other composers featured are Simon Holt and Anthony Gilbert Released by NMC Records in May 2017.
"Change of a more programmatic nature is portrayed in Donnacha Dennehyʼs excellentThe weather of it. Composed in a continuous musical stream lasting almost 20 minutes and performed with energy and vitality by the Doric Quartet, acoustically aerodynamic figures and patterns glide along until blown off course by sudden changes in direction or temperature. Shifts occur through rapid changes in register and articulation, with Dennehy imaginatively exploiting the quartetʼs full range and drawing on harmonics, overtones and microtones." Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone Magazine, September 2017 issue. Review in the Guardian, May 2017.
Crash Ensemble: Ghosts (Bedroom Community)
Contains the premiere recording of As An Nós (2011) in a disc also featuring first recordings of works by Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurosson. Released by Bedroom Community in June 2017.
Sophia Subbaya Vastek: Histories (Innova)
Contains a new recording of Stainless Staining (2007) in a disc also featuring pieces by John Cage and Michael Harrison, performed by Sophia Subbaya Vatek. Released by Innova Records on May 26 2017.
Jasper String Quartet: Unbound (Sono Luminus/New Amsterdam)
Contains the premiere recording of Pushpulling (2007) in a disc also featuring pieces by Missy Mazzoli, Caroline Shaw, Ted Hearne, Judd Greenstein, Annie Gosfield and David Lang. Released March 2017.
London Sinfonietta: Open Score (NMC Records)
Contains the premiere recording of A Fatal Optimist (2008) in a disc of pieces specially written for COMA in the UK. Released February 2016.
Smith Quartet: Dance (Signum)
Contains the premiere recording of Stamp (2008) along with works by John Adams, Tan Dun, Michael Nyman, Joe Cutler and others. Played by the UK-based Smith Quartet. Released by Signum Records on 31 January 2011.
"Donnacha Dennehy's infectious "STAMP" is a caffeinated riff on a 14th-century Saltarello." - Independent on Sunday (UK)
Isabelle O'Connell: Reservoir (Diatribe)
William Dowdall: Works for Solo Flute
This Celestial Recordings CD from the flautist William Dowdall features the first recording of FAT for flute and tape (commissioned and performed by William Dowdall). Online review at the Irish Times.
Kate Ellis: Jump
Contains the premiere recording of my spectral setting of Aisling Gheal for cello and electronics alongside works by Linda Buckley, Enda Bates, Laura Sheeran and Niall Vallely. Played by the wonderful cellist, Kate Ellis. Released 15 August 2014.
Susanna Borsch: Off-Limits
Contains the premiere recording of BRAT (2000/5) along with works by Ned McGowan, Gijs Levelt and others. Played by the Dutch/German recorder virtuoso, Susanna Borsch.
The NMC Songbook
Contains the premiere recording of Swift's Epitaph (2008) for countertenor (Andrew Watts) and percussion (Owen Gunnell). Along with about 90 other compositions! Online reviews from the Guardian, musicalcriticism.com
"...Donnacha Dennehy’s version of ‘Swift’s Epitaph’ for counter-tenor (Andrew Watts) and percussion (Owen Gunnell), where the emphatic and rhythmically alert opening for drum and vibes evaporates into trickling glockenspiel and then almost works its way back beneath the voice’s strange chant, an altogether magical piece." Paul Griffiths
Irish Contemporary Organ Music (Played by David Adams)
Contains the premiere recordings of Work for Organ (1992) and Mad,Avid,Sad (2000). Also includes works by Gerald Barry, Kevin Volans, Buckley, Deane, Godfrey, O'Connell and MacLachlan.
One Minute More
Contains the premiere recording (by Guy Livingston) of the very short North Circular (1') with a film by Nelleke Koop.
By The New Time
By the new time is a compilation of Irish electro-acoustic music. It contains the premiere recording of pAt for piano and tape, played by the well-known British pianist Joanna MacGregor. Also includes pieces by Michael Alcorn, Roger Doyle, Judith Ring, Jurgen Simpson and others.
Coloring Outside The Lines
These composers range from San Francisco to Dublin. Includes first recordings of Begobs II and IV for solo piano. Also includes works by James Bohn, Linda Antas and Camille Goudeseune.
Contemporary Music from Ireland, Volume Five
Includes a recording of 'To Herbert Brun Part IV' played by the Crash Ensemble.
Knock on Wood - Tatiana Koleva
Virtuoso Bulgarian percussionist, Tatiana Koleva, performs a dynamic selection of new works for percussion, including Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s ‘Paddy’. The CD also includes compositions by Louis Andriessen, Cheil Meijering and Roderik de Man among others.
Alex Petcu: Intime
Virtuoso percussionist, Alex Petcu, makes second recording of Paddy. Released by Lyric FM, September 2016
New Works for Percussion - Slagwerkgroep Den Haag
The six members of Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Percussion Group of The Hague) have 600 instruments and a repertoire that encompasses the entire literature of western percussion music. The five very diverse and distinctive works on this CD, among them Donnacha Dennehy’s ‘Composition for Percussion, Loops, Blips and Flesh’, were specially commissioned for the group in 2002-03.
Released November 2024 by Nonesuch Records.
"Dennehy’s shrewd, sensitive ear for timbre is a large part of what makes Land of Winter such enveloping listening. Just as important, though, is the ingenious way that his overtone-rich harmony and use of refrains conveys both cyclicality and change... By the time we arrive at November — granitic and slow, and with allusions to a Bach chorale — we are back where we began the winter’s journey, and yet time also seems to have moved ineluctably, even a bit sadly, forward...Mesmerizing" – New York Times
‘A beautifully crafted portrait of landscape and seasons from Dennehy, his sound world compellingly caught by modern music specialists Alarm Will Sound. Land of Winter offers further proof, if it were required, that Dennehy is Ireland’s most significant composer to have emerged since Gerald Barry.’ – Gramophone, Editor's Choice
