Papillons - Schumann

BΘal Dearg - Rhona Clarke

Images Book 2 - Debussy

Imagery was a thread linking the music in Anthony Byrne's piano recital on Wednesday.

Schumann's Papillons is a fantastic and mysterious series of fleeting character sketches. The titles of the three pieces in Book 2 of Debussy's Images seem more explicit, but the music is so allusive that it stretches the imagination at least as much as the Schumann. And while Rhona Clarke's BΘal Dearg is named after the wild, beautiful place in north Mayo, its imagery is suggestive rather than specific. Indeed, the composer said she named the composition only after she had finished it.

Anthony Byrne's approach to the Schumann was not so much a series of precise, fragmentary glimpses as a swirling sequence of hinted characterisations. For music that presses the boundaries of cohesion, it was a little too loose in technique and expression.

The Debussy was far more convincing, largely because its range of colour and control of rhythm created a framework within which the listener's imagination could flow freely.

Byrne commissioned BΘal Dearg for this recital, and it was nicely played. It opens with three highly contrasted ideas, but it is not one of those compositions concerned primarily with the moment. In the space of five minutes or so, its material is combined and developed in ways that sound natural yet are rarely obvious. Well written for the instrument - Clarke is a pianist - this is a work other players are likely to take up.