NCH John Field Room, Dublin
Musicians who devote their energies with equal seriousness to composing and performing are a rare breed these days. Conor Linehan is one of them.
Born and based in Dublin, he has won a solid reputation for his creative work as a theatre composer, apparently without having to put his piano-playing permanently on the back-burner.
Linehan’s dualism is more than just technical: counterbalancing the chic jazziness of his own stage scores, his recital programmes consistently reveal an affinity with the canon of classic-romantic piano literature.
It was thus a pleasant surprise that for this lunchtime concert Linehan had thrown in three short pieces of his own. Cast in a mould that might have been borrowed from Satie, Februaryformed a pensive prelude to the bell-study Sostenutoand the jazz-ostinato Lay-Low.
Whether these little items were thought-out improvisations or rounded, finished creations, didn’t matter: what clearly came across was approachable, witty, interesting music.
In Schubert’s Sonata in C minor D958, some might have preferred a little less flexing of the tempo between phrases – which, with the rapid hand-crossing of the finale, becomes in the end practically unavoidable.
Yet this characteristically discursive work made for a half-hour’s focused listening, thanks to the expressive economy, fastidiously graded dynamics, and sure sense of the relationship between the details and the whole.
Linehan's technique seems to expand to meet whatever requirements he places on it. Thus, while there might have been a certain hesitancy to the straightforward minuet of Schubert's sonata, the same cannot be said of Liszt's surpassing Mephisto Waltz No 1. At no cost to excitement, its ferocious challenges were dispatched with level-headed poise.
