Premieres of new works usually come and go and are soon forgotten about, a scenario that composer/guitarist Ben Dwyer knows all about. He'll be hoping his new guitar concerto, to be premiered next Friday by Brazilian guitarist Fabio Zanon and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, won't fall victim to the same fate.

Dwyer has recently moved back to his home town of Dublin after four years of living in Barcelona. Without lamenting for life there, his love of Spain is evident. Many of his works (all of the last 10) have Spanish titles. So, is his identity as an Irish composer, working now in an Irish setting, something he thinks about?

"I think we have to move away from what we consider to be Irish as that which is immediately identifiable as being Irish in the traditional indigenous sense. I'm not intrigued by Irish music itself to be honest and it bears no relation to what I want to do in my music, but what am I if I'm not an Irish composer at the same time?

I tend not to be the sort of composer that takes on an ideological coat, though. I'm not following any paths. If I'm spending four years in Spain, Spain will have an influence on what I do. I can't help responding to my surroundings as a composer. But coming back from Spain, a hotbed of cultural identity and problems, I felt my identity here was actually a lot easier to contend with."

Dwyer met Fabio Zanon whilst studying guitar at London's Royal Academy of Music and his knowledge of the Brazilian as a performer and person has been a "releasing experience" for him in the context of the writing process.

"I've always written for specific players but strangely though, this is the first guitar concerto I've written for a guitarist other than myself. I've always performed my own guitar works! With this concerto, I took my own hands out of the equation and just went for it.

It gave me great freedom to just write and not worry about anything, but a strange one too because, though I know the instrument so well, I am pushing boundaries that I hadn't done personally before."

Dwyer developed an interest in composing initially in college in Dublin because "there was so little guitar music to play, I just decided to write music for myself" but finds that the question of repertoire hasn't changed much.

"I still think there is room in the guitar repertoire for another great concerto. It's a wide open field. I wanted to write a concerto that Fabio would want to play again and that other players would want to play. I'm trying to contribute to the repertoire with this rather than flex my esoteric muscles by experimenting with form, etcetera, so this concerto is definitely on the lighter side of my writing."

I could've drunk 10 coffees chatting to Dwyer on this occasion, such is his intriguing take on music and politicsf and musical politics. Unfortunately, we didn't solve any of the problems facing contemporary composers and performers but Dwyer did drop one particular pearl of wisdom in those murky Irish waters all the same.

"We lack an historical context of classical music in Ireland and we're still at a very fundamental level of musical appreciation in this country. Instead of contemporary composers meeting an Irish audience halfway, I think the audience needs to meet us halfway."