Coming Home

Celebrating Ronald Masin (1937–2025)

Since arriving in Dublin in 1987, Ronald and his wife Maria taught hundreds of young string players, through the Conservatory of Music and Drama and through Young European Strings School of Music, which Maria founded in 1988 and where Ronald was Artistic Director. Ronald also founded the Music Instrument Fund of Ireland, which has helped generations of young musicians play on instruments worthy of their talent. For nearly forty years, the school’s orchestras, classes and summer courses were a second home to many, and plenty of people still describe that circle as family.

At the heart of the programme is Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, one of the great works for strings: sunlit, passionate and full of Italian warmth. Performers are former students, colleagues and friends of Ronald’s; Young European Strings Chamber Orchestra alumni who have gone on to become members of the National Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and teachers at Haute école de musique de Genève, Hochschule für Musik Dresden, Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal College of Music, amongst others. The evening will also include tributes from those who knew him best.