Irish Times writers review the latest concerts and shows.

Cassard, MacGregor, Tinney, Bantry House, Co Cork,

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 1-4, 19, 20

Unlike the atmosphere at the annual West Cork Chamber Music Festival, which is suitably festive, the air at Bantry House on Saturday for the beginning of a six-day cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas was more that of a musical pilgrimage.

There is no other body of piano music which is so widely regarded with reverence and awe as Beethoven's, and certainly none which offers such comprehensive rewards through presentation in cyclic form.

The Bantry cycle is a chronological one and is in the hands of three performers, Philippe Cassard, Joanna MacGregor and Hugh Tinney, each of them sharing the honours on each of the six nights over which the concerts are spread.

Beethoven waited until 1795, when he was 24, to publish his Op. 1, a set of three piano trios; his Op. 2, a set of three piano sonatas followed a few months later. Haydn, to whom the Op. 2 sonatas were dedicated, was still alive, with some of his best choral and chamber music yet to be written, and Mozart was less than four years in his grave.

The Bantry performances were shared between Cassard (the Sonatas in F minor and A) and MacGregor (the Sonata in C). Both showed a certain stylistic discomfort, as if their awareness of Beethoven's later music and his known storminess of character were being brought to bear on works, that, however forward-looking in certain details, are still of the 18th century.

Cassard seemed reluctant to give the slow movements time to speak and the Largo appassionato of the Sonata in A, with its evocation of orchestral wind and a pizzicato bass, was particularly disappointing, His tempo choices in the two finales were also less than convincing, the Prestissimo first running a little out of control and the Grazioso second starting a little haltingly. His best playing came in the Scherzo of the A major Sonata, its outer sections done with delectable lightness.

Joanna MacGregor sounded as if she was having an extreme off-day in the overtly virtuosic challenges of the Sonata in C. Although, like Cassard, she played from the music, there appeared to be numerous inaccuracies, and her handling of the slow movement seemed riddled with mis-readings, including mis-readings of clefs. The frequent polarising of the music-making into rant and whispering meant even the more sensitive moments were oddly less than persuasive.

Cassard and Tinney shared the two sonatas of Op. 49 between them - the high opus number relates to the time of publication not composition - and both played with the straightforward poise that the young who meet these deliberately simple works in their piano lessons strive for in vain.

Tinney, the only player to perform without music, offered the elusive Sonata in E flat, Op. 7, with affecting directness, taking its many unusual challenges in his stride. Here was playing of power without overstatement, of exhilarating technical exactness, and of a sensitivity that showed a grasp of the significance of silence in Beethoven's musical argument. This latter was crucial in the success of slow movement, the most extended that the composer had yet essayed in a sonata, and in this probing performance the highlight of the evening's music-making. - Michael Dervan

Tinney, MacGregor, Cassard, Bantry House, Co Cork

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 5-10

The six works of the second evening of Beethoven piano sonatas on Sunday offered a lesson in contrasts at all levels, between and within individual movements as well as between and within individual works. Beethoven was out to make an impression, and, with the skill of a modern spin-doctor, he made sure the message received by the public in 1790s Vienna was the one he wanted to send out.

The three sonatas of his Op. 10, published in 1798, show him first in tempestuous C minor mode (he would later use this key for his first characteristic piano concerto, his Fifth Symphony, and for the Piano Sonata, Op. 111, which would be his last), then in wryly witty humour in the Sonata in F, and finally in fully-blown virtuosic flight in the Sonata in D. This last sonata also includes the most tragically laden of Adagios.

The next sonata, the Pathétique, Op. 13, fiery and touching, seems to have uncovered an even more sensitive nerve among his listeners. Its special hold has lasted for over two centuries, and it remains, I suspect, one of those pieces which still makes people want to learn the piano.

Yet his next two sonatas, his Op. 14 (which, like the Pathétique, were also published in 1799), could hardly be more different, the first with much that is featherlight, the second full of genial humour and ending with a surprise-laden Scherzo.

Three of the sonatas - Op. 10 Nos 1 and 2, and Op. 14 No 1 were in the safe hands of Hugh Tinney, whose playing was judicious and clean, even-tempered and balanced. These qualities stood out all the more for the contrast they offered with Joanna MacGregor, who played the third of the Op. 10 sonatas and the Pathétique.

MacGregor sounded to be in wild-cat mode, as if she were experiencing some inner turmoil or frustration and taking it out on the music. The frustration for the listener was that, mixed in with her expressive and dynamic exaggerations, her strange emendations to Beethoven's text, and her frequent over-pedalling, were moments of beauty, passages rendered with care and feeling that suggested tantalising alternative possibilities were she to find it possible to rein in her excesses.

Philippe Cassard made just one contribution, the Sonata in G, Op. 14 No. 2, in which he rounded off the evening with grace and humour, taking the strange staccato march of the central Andante a shade on the fast side, but making it work all the same. - Michael Dervan

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