Hugh Lane Gallery
De Falla – Spanish Folk Songs (exc).
Biber – Sonata Representativa.
Ronan Guilfoyle – Binary Number.
Stravinsky – Suite Italienne (exc).
A relaxed, almost casual delivery banished formality at the Hugh Lane Gallery, last stop in the Hunka and Dunne Duo’s six-concert Music Network tour. A well-balanced programme spanning the baroque to the contemporary was the platform for a chance to hear violinist Katherine Hunka, leader of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, in the more intimate setting of a recital. She was partnered by Dermot Dunne, Ireland’s leading accordion-player. Either they faked it brilliantly or they were having a lot of fun – lots of banter, an air of fin-de-tour, something that clearly appealed to the audience whose responses were lively. People laughed aloud, for example, in the baroque piece, Heinrich Biber’s Sonata Representativa which playfully mimics various bird songs (and a frog). No need for programme notes – the players called out each bird in advance, with Hunka combining nightingale songs or hen clucks with frantic accompanying figures.
The programme’s contemporary piece was Ronan Guilfoyle’s Binary Number, commissioned by Con Brio in Sligo and premiered in February. It’s an energetic, seven-minute piece, but the sum of its parts – a short jazz riff fastidiously fashioned into quasi-minimalist micro-motivic activity – was quite hard to discern.
Guilfoyle elected not to exploit the accordion’s special qualities aside from colour.
The folk and rustic associations of the accordion came nicely into play in selections from de Falla’s Spanish Folk Songs and Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, his own violin-piano versions of music from his ballet Pulcinella. All were character miniatures delivered with flair.
Listeners who know the bitter-sweet “Serenata” from the Stravinsky were likely sorry it was left out here, not least because of the contrast it provides with the faster pieces in the suite.
However, it was dropped to allow time for a few lollipops, in which there was considerable compensation, above all in Monti’s Czardas which was given with outrageous ham in the slow parts and at a thrilling, wicked pace in the fast ones.
