In late 1939, Irish composer Havelock Nelson was instrumental in founding the Dublin Junior Orchestra with a view to providing young players of classical music with the opportunity to gain orchestral experience.
Thereafter the orchestra adopted a policy of offering opportunities for a wider range of younger conductors, but O'Callaghan frequently returned to conduct individual concerts up until 1995.
[2] During the 1940s, before the establishment of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra (RÉSO), the DOP supplied the demand in Dublin for symphonic music at a time when few orchestral concerts were otherwise available.
5 and Mozart's Bassoon Concerto (both in 1944) and, remarkably, the first concert performance outside Russia of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (9 June 1942).
The enlargement of the RÉSO in 1948 replaced the DOP's pre-eminent role in providing orchestral concerts with those of a professional standard, and the founding of other amateur orchestras during the later twentieth century complemented and developed its work.