John Kinsella writes: 'This rhapsodic work was written at the request of David Daly, the Irish double bass soloist and Principal Bass of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, to mark the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

A relative of David's, his great-uncle Eugene Daly and a member of the Athlone Town Pipe Band, sailed from Cobh on the ill-fated Titanic, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean on 15th April 1912. The story goes that Eugene played a tune called Erin's Lament when the liner was departing from Cobh and after some research David found a copy of this melody with the assistance of a member of today's Pipe Band in Athlone. Eugene, his sister, and a friend survived the disaster.

This piece for unaccompanied double bass charts the Titanic's journey from Belfast to Southampton to Cherbourg to Cobh (Queenstown) and on into the Atlantic where it struck an iceberg and sank, killing the majority of it's passengers.

Pre-echoes of the pipe tune are heard during the earlier part of the rhapsody, the tune is heard in full at the Cobh departure and the work concludes with short quotes from the melody.

15th April 1912 was premiered by David Daly on 26 March 2013 at the National Concert Hall Dublin, in the presence of the composer and James Daly, Eugene Daly's nephew.

15th April 1912 received its UK premiere at Wells & Mendip Museum (Wells, Somerset) on Sunday 22 March 2015 performed by David Daly.

Since taking up composition on a full time basis in 1988, Dublin born John Kinsella (b.1932) has composed ten symphonies, a second violin concerto, a cello concerto, a fourth string quartet, all of which have been publicly performed, and many solo and chamber works. String Quartet No.5 was premiered at the 2013 West Cork Chamber Music Festival and other recent premieres include Symphony No.10, which was performed by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Gabor Takacs-Nagy in 1912, and it was also performed by the RTENSO at the NCH in April 2013.

John Kinsella is a member of Aosdana and is a recipient of the Marten Toonder award and some of his works are recorded on Chandos, Naxos, RTE Lyricfm and Irish Chamber Orchestra labels.

During the late 1960s and 70s, his music reflected the style and techniques of the time, but he has since forger his own personal idiom and approach to harmony.

"Here is a composer punching in the heavy-weight class...The works on this RTELyricfm pack a wallop...This is viscerally thrilling music, thoroughly engaging, rhythmically propulsive and essentially lyrical." (Robert Reilly, Catholic News Agency, USA)

"[Symphony No.10 is] a large-scale work that brims with physical and metal energy, and with a sharp musical intellect that grapples fearlessly with the challenges of creating a large scale structure." (Martin Adams, Irish Times)