The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (formerly Ireland National Symphony Orchestra) plays a central rôle in classical music in Ireland, through live performance, broadcast and touring. As an integral part of RTÉ (Ireland’s Public Service Broadcaster), the orchestra reaches a great number of listeners through its weekly broadcasts on RTÉ lyric fm and through its association with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). In addition to its annual subscription season, Horizons contemporary music series, national tours and residencies and summer concerts series, the orchestra continues to make a name for itself internationally through its recordings with Naxos, Marco Polo and on the RTÉ label.

In 2004 the RTÉ NSO won the Orchestra and Concerto: CD Première category of the Critics’ Awards in the 2004 Cannes Classical Awards for its recording of Joly Braga Santos’s Symphony No. 4 (8.225233) under conductor Álvaro Cassuto. Highlights of recent seasons have included Ireland’s first complete Mahler symphony cycle, as well as complete cycles of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Prokofiev, Beethoven and Schumann symphonies, a Brahmsfest, a Stravinsky retrospective, and the orchestral song-cycles of Mahler.