Exclusive: Irish national orchestra wins day-trip to China

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra are about to discover (you read it here first) that they are heading for China in a fortnight, their first trip to the country, and completely out of the blue.

What happened, we hear, is that China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing asked the veteran conductor José Serebrier to bring an orchestra of his choice for the season’s final concert on Sunday, 23 July 2017.

José had fallen in love with Dublin a little while back and thought it would be nice to take the Irish out to China for a day – just the one concert of Verdi and Glazunov – and then back to the duty-free.

There will be an official announcement tomorrow.