Half-way through his tour of Ireland for Music Network/ESB, Miceal O'Rourke was relaxed enough to share some of his thoughts about music with the audience. He even gave some musical examples to show the difference between Haydn and Mozart: this was after a very clean and carefully planned performance of Haydn's Sonata in E Flat Hob xv1:52. Haydn's lines are not singable like Mozart's are, but O'Rourke compensated for this by allowing the composer's craftsmanship to shine forth.
With John Field's Chanson Russe Variee the pianist was on home ground. Field's variations on a Russian drinking song are more vigorous than one might expect from his Nocturnes and though the piece is short, its seven variations encompass quite a range of pianism.
Even more interesting were the Three Piano Pieces by Michele Esposito, whose name is seldom heard, though he was prominent in the Royal Irish Academy of Music for four to six years. His ability to write in many different styles may have told against him, but the impressionist style of the Three Pieces would certainly encourage further exploration. Sound pictures of dawn, noon and sunset, they were more Mediterranean than Irish in their inspiration.
The tightrope walker presents a rose is a little exercise in sean nos style, with modernistic interpolations, by Seoirse Bodley. It will strike listeners as being simultaneously strange and familiar.
Miceal O'Rourke played Chopin's Ballade no 1 with easy mastery: it was as if he had written it himself and could allow himself a welcome fluidity in the interpretation, making the narrative move now fast, now slow, according to the need of the moment. Schumann's Caraval is a sort of Ballade on an immense scale, held loosely together by four notes of which there are fleeting glimpses from time to time, like a masked dancer that continually eludes discovery, but with the hectic continuity of a carnival where grave and gay trip over each other.
Last week we erroneously gave the wrong date for the Tango at the Gallery concert in aid of Cerebral Palsy Ireland. It takes place tonight at the Shaw Room, National Gallery, Merrion Square, and features The Ice Ensemble (leader Kenneth Rice) with music by Argentinan composer Astor Piazzolla, and a composition by the music students of the CPI work centre. Tickets are £12 from 01-2695355.
