Daniel Glatt

Daniel Hope's latest album, "Irish Roots" embodies his deep connection to Ireland, inherited from his paternal great-grandfather who left Waterford for South Africa in the 1890s. Although never residing in Ireland, Hope's fascination with its culture led to the creation of the documentary "Celtic Dreams: Daniel Hope’s Hidden Irish History." Supported by musicologist Olivier Fourés and experiences with award-winning Irish band Lúnasa, Hope explores the intersection of folk and classical music. "Irish Roots" reflects this journey, featuring compositions by Ina Boyle and Turlough O’Carolan alongside classics like "Danny Boy" and Vivaldi's L’estro armonico concertos.

It was the age of the Lumière Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, the Wright Brothers and Louis Blériot, Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur – an age not unlike our own, marked by rapid scientific and technological development as well as intense literary, artistic and musical activity. The Belle Époque, the period between the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of World War One in 1914, was a time of apparent peace and prosperity but with a darker reality of social and economic deprivation lying not far beneath its gilded surface. This era of creativity and contradiction has long fascinated Daniel Hope: “I often wish I had a time machine to go back to the salons of Paris, indeed to that entire age,” he says.