UNA HUNT
Professional Qualifications
PhD (NUI Maynooth)
D Mus (h.c. Queens University Belfast)
Adjunct Professor of Music (University College Dublin)
Konzertfach Diplom-piano (Universität Für Musik, Vienna)
B Mus (Queens University Belfast)
Selected Reviews
CD Reviews
Shower of Pearls, The music of George Alexander Osborne CD
Displays fluency and craft, allied to a not inconsiderable melodic flair
and a lively sense of humour - Gramophone
The Music of Joan Trimble CD
Played with exuberance and skill, a delight! - The Sunday Times
E. J. Moeran, the Complete Piano Music CD
Una Hunt plays the music on this splendid disc with great sensitivity.
A remarkable tribute - The Sunday Tribune
Concert Review
William Vincent Wallace bicentenary concert, Jerome Hynes Theatre, Wexford Festival Opera, 3 Nov 2012:
http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2012/11/the-trimmings-wexford-festival-opera.html
Book Review
Una Hunt and Mary Pierce, co-eds, France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives (Re-imagining Ireland series - Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015):
https://peterlangoxford.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/france-and-ireland-notes-and-narratives-reviewed-in-the-irish-times/
Performance and Broadcasting Biography
Una Hunt is one of Ireland’s leading and most versatile pianists. As a soloist, she has often performed concertos with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. She gave the first modern performance in these islands of Albeniz’s rediscovered piano concerto (RTÉ NSO, 1989) and, also with the National Symphony Orchestra, she performed the unknown Moscheles’s Recollections of Ireland dating from 1826, the first performance of this work in Ireland in 180 years. She is also an active recitalist performing programmes in Britain, Ireland, the USA and Russia and has toured throughout Europe and the USA with her violinist sister Fionnuala. Una has performed in piano trios since childhood, initially with her brother and sister in The Hunt Trio, subsequently in the Dublin Piano Trio and Triantán Piano Trio. Other notable appearances on television and in concert include international soloists such as flautist James Galway, violist Bruno Giuranna and violinists Franco Gulli and Ruggiero Ricci.
Una is also an award-winning broadcaster and producer specializing in the rediscovery of important Irish composers and performers. She received the 2017 New York Festivals Bonze prize for her programme: John Beckett, the Man and his Music. Also, The Wild Irish Girl and her Harp (2014) on the novelist, harpist and society cult figure, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) was nominated for a Celtic Media Festival award.
Una’s contribution to musical life has been recognised with several distinctions and honours including an honorary DMus (Queens University Belfast), and an honorary Professorship (University College Dublin).
Research Biography
Una Hunt is a leading authority in the field of historic Irish music and Performance Practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has completed several consultancies with the National Library of Ireland which include a detailed study of their music holdings (2001) and a biographical listing of Irish composers (2004). She has led many world-premiere performances at the National Library, recorded a CD of piano music from the collections (Fallen Leaves from an Irish Album, 2006) and devised and set up the library’s first digital music archive: The National Archive of Irish Composers: http://naic.dmc.dit.ie/ (2010).
Una’s PhD thesis was the first to acknowledge and provide a detailed study of the musical contribution made by one of Ireland's foremost pianist-composers, who enjoyed a considerable reputation. Una has recorded the first and only CD of Osborne’s music for RTÉ Lyric fm (2004).
Una has masterminded a significant diary of events to celebrate two hundred years since the first publication of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. These include a national competition for young Irish singers; a documentary series for RTÉ lyric fm, a multi-media touring exhibition and national and international performances. The exhibition is a particular success – viewed by 90,000 people throughout the island of Ireland. A six-CD box set of world premiere recordings and a separate selection accompanied by a period piano has also been released. In 2010, the Thomas Moore Festival travelled to Carnegie Hall, New York, where it received two standing ovations and a performance was given in Russia to mark the unveiling of a sculpture honouring Moore at the University of St Petersburg.
Una Hunt has lectured extensively at home and abroad including various venues in the United States and the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco.
CD Releases
1. Piano Portraits, the Music of Fanny Robinson (2018)
2. William Vincent Wallace Commemorative Album 1854 and CD
(Heritage Music Productions / RTÉ Lyric fm, 2012)
3. My Gentle Harp, The Square Piano Recordings
(DIT/Thomas Moore Festival TMF2008.107, 2009)
4. My Gentle Harp, The Complete Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies
(Thomas Moore Festival TMF2008.101-106, 2008)
5. Gems of Irish Operas (2CDs, Heritage Music Productions, 2008)
6. Fallen Leaves from an Irish Album (RTÉ lyric fm CD 109, 2006)
7. Shower of Pearls, The music of George Alexander Osborne
(RTÉ lyric fm CD103, 2004)
8. E. J. Moeran, the Complete Piano Music
(ASV/ Sanctuary Classics CD DCA 1138, 2003)
9. The Music of Joan Trimble (Naxos-Marco Polo 8.225059, 1999)
10. Irish Fantasy (Continuum CCD 1051, 1992)
Additional tracks
1. Cork 800 Inaugural Concert LP (RTÉ, 1985)
2. Classical Ireland CD (Cosmic Sounds, 2002)
3. Composing the Island CD (RTÉ lyric fm, 2016)
Publications
1. ‘Recollections of Ireland – a Virtuoso Souvenir’, Documents, Sources, Perspectives, 1790-1920 (Irish Musical Studies series, Gill and Macmillan, forthcoming).
2. Sources and Style in Moore’s Irish Melodies (Routledge, 2017).
3. ‘Moore, Stevenson, Bishop and the Powers – a Series of Complex Relationships’, Thomas Moore and Romantic Inspiration, ed.: Sarah McCleave and Brian Caraher (Routledge, 2017).
4. Editor of volume and author of ‘Osborne Paris and the Pluie de perles’, France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives (Re-imagining Ireland series - Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), 16-37.
5. ‘William Hamilton Bird’, ‘John Field’, ‘Frédéric Kalkbrenner’, ‘Ignaz Moscheles’, ‘Arthur O’Leary’, ‘Osborne Family’, ‘George Alexander Osborne’, ‘Panormo Family’, ‘Piano: ‘Piano music’, ‘Piano Playing and Teaching’, ‘James and William Power’, ‘Clara Schumann’; Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland (Dublin: UCD Press, Oct. 2013); 378-381, 552, 687, 777-8, 808, 808-10, 833-6, 859-60, 922.
6. ‘My Gentle Harp, the genesis of the Irish Melodies’, Thomas Moore: Texts, Contexts, Hypertext (Re-Imagining Ireland series - Oxford: Peter Lang Press, May 2013); 27-44.
7. Editor: Album 1854 (with CD), William Vincent Wallace bicentenary publication (Dublin: Heritage Music Productions and RTE Lyric fm in association with the National Library of Ireland, 2012).
8. ‘The National Archive of Irish Composers: Creating a Digital Collection of Music from the National Library of Ireland’, Fontes Artis Musicae, Journal of the International Association of Music Libraries, 58/3 (Middleton, USA: IAML, July-Sept. 2011); 266-273.
9. ‘George Alexander Osborne and Wieniawski’s Irish Connections’: Henryk Wieniawski and the Bravura Tradition, (Poznań, Poland: The Henryk Wieniawski Musical Society, Sept. 2011); 187-199.
10. Text for digital online archive – National Archive of Irish composers: http://naic.dmc.dit.ie/, Nov. 2010.
11. ‘The Harpers’ Legacy: National Airs and Pianoforte Music’; Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, vol. 6, 2010 – 2011: http://www.music.ucc.ie/jsmi/index.php/jsmi/article/view/75; 3-53.
12. ‘The Irish Melodies and their musical influence’, My Gentle Harp: Moore’s Irish Melodies, 1808-2008 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, June 2008; 8-14); also text for the accompanying exhibition: My Gentle Harp.
13. ‘The Little Ponies that Beat the Mare: Thomas Moore and his Irish Melodies’, The Journal of Music in Ireland, Jan/Feb 2008; 6-9.
14. REPORT: ‘Biographical Listing of Composers Born on or Before 1904’, National Library of Ireland/ Arts Council of Ireland, Mar. 2004.
15. ‘The Piano Writing of the Irish Virtuoso George Alexander Osborne’, Proceedings of the First Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI), May 2003; 95-103.
16. ‘The Music Collection at the National Library of Ireland’, Brio, Journal of the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML), Autumn/winter 2002; 3-10.
17. REPORT: ‘A Critical Evaluation of the Music Collections at the National Library of Ireland’, National Library of Ireland/ Arts Council of Ireland, June 2001.