Byline: Andrea Smith

M

usic brought them together, but it is their love of a good debate that has turned Bill Whelan, 72, and David Brophy, 50, into steadfast friends. These giants of the Irish music landscape share a passion for music and reading, but they also love to get stuck in discussing matters of philosophy, psychology and politics. "We don't always hold the same position, but I always enjoy the conversations," says Whelan, who composed the Grammy award-winning score for the Irish dance phenomenon Riverdance.

"I never come away from one where we

haven't ventilated something in a way that actually has brought us both forward," he adds. "David has a great sense of humour and we have good fun together. If I told him tomorrow that I had done something [wrong], I would expect and would not be disappointed by a very frank and non-judgmental response."

The friends first met 15 years ago, when Brophy was principal conductor of the RTE Concert Orchestra (RTE CO). The orchestra was performing The Seville Suite, which Whelan had composed for the Seville Expo '92, and a friendship blossomed between them.

"I love our conversations," says Brophy. "Bill is an elder lemon compared to me

and I'm always learning from him. He has experience that I will never have, particularly through the work he did in the late Sixties and Seventies.

"I've gone through difficult times in my life and we've discussed them over lunch. Bill listens and at the end you get a few

short words from him. It makes me breathe easier because there's a sense of understanding there."

Brophy has one younger brother, John, and they lived in Santry on Dublin's Northside with their parents, Mary and Liam. He began piano lessons with the celebrated piano teacher Daniel Walsh at 13, and became "a little bit obsessed" with

orchestras while at college studying music performance.

The attraction to conducting relates, in part, to Brophy's desire for structure, the seeds of which were sown when he was at school. "I was horrendously bullied at primary school and got my head kicked in a lot," he says. "When I was eight, a kid in my class threatened to hang me and the situation went on for years. He would graphically describe how he was going to hang me from the bars at the back of the schoolyard and I utterly believed him. I got up for school every day feeling sick because I thought I was going to be killed that day."

While Brophy's parents addressed the bullying with the school, it didn't have procedures in place to deal with the situation. Brophy feels that the terror he experienced had a bigger impact on him than he realised, which he has dealt with in recent years through counselling.

"I spent all of my childhood utterly uncertain of how to feel or think, so I like relationships that are structured," he says. "When you're conducting, you interact with all of these people...