Dublin-born Thérèse Fahy, one of Ireland’s foremost pianists, enjoys an active performing and teaching career at home and abroad. Her regular recital and concerto appearances throughout Europe and the United States have met with critical acclaim, as have her numerous broadcasts for both RTÉ and BBC.  

In recent seasons, Thérèse has toured the east coast of the United States, 2011 with a recital-programme of solo Irish contemporary piano music supported by Culture Ireland and the Fulbright Commission, and in 2012 with performances of the 24 Debussy Preludes, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. 

Other engagements have included solo recitals, lecture-recitals and masterclasses in France, Italy, Poland, Spain, USA, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia and Ireland, as well as serving on the international juries of the Dublin International Piano Competition, the Manchester International Concerto Competition in Great Britain, the prestigious Baltic International Piano Competition, the 2015 Scriabin Piano Competition, Grosseto, Italy,  along with a return invitation to the Dublin International Piano Competition, which took place in May 2015.

Thérèse Fahy has an affinity for French music, having performed the complete works for solo piano by Debussy at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery, in addition to many performances of works by Debussy and Ravel throughout Ireland.  She has also recorded a documentary, ‘The Snow is Dancing’, on his life and piano music for Ireland’s national broadcasting station, RTE Lyric FM.

In 2018, thanks to an Arts Council Special Music Project Award, Thérèse will curate and perform Ireland's Tombeau to Debussy, an exciting 3-concert festival at the National Concert Hall and at the Centrel Culturel Irlandais in Paris, featuring new works by Raymond Deane, Sebastian Adams, Gráinne Mulvey, Roger Doyle, Jane O'Leary and Siobhán Cleary, in honour of Claude Debussy on the anniversary of his death. Full details can be found here. 

Thérèse is particularly identified with the performance of Olivier Messiaen’s piano music, having given the Irish premieres of Reveil des Oiseaux (2008) with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, under its Principal Conductor, Gerhard Markson, at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, and, Visions de l’Amen (1990) for two pianos. In 2001, she curated a four-day international Messiaen Festival at the National Gallery of Ireland, centred round the 60th anniversary of the first performance of Quartet for the End of Time. Her performances of the solo works of Messiaen have been described by The Irish Times as a “tour de force”. 

In 2014, Thérèse received a major Music Project Award from the Arts Council for her especially commissioned collection of six solo piano pieces, entitled Handprint, from Irish composers Bill Whelan, Raymond Deane, Siobhan Cleary, Michael Holohan, Gráinne Mulvey and Benjamin Dwyer.  The world première recital of all six pieces was an acclaimed highlight of the New Music Dublin Festival in March 2014, followed by a uniquely curated recital series (Handprint: Before and Beyond, incorporating each new piece into a non-contemporary recital setting) in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery in May and June 2014. The Handprint Collection was recorded by RTE Lyric FM.

 

A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, a Fulbright scholar and a French Government scholar, Thérèse Fahy is a senior professor of the piano faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music.