Hugh Lane Gallery
This free concert afforded two valuable opportunities. The first was the chance to hear a section leader from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in a different milieu. Martin Johnson has led the NSO's cellos since 2004 but has had limited exposure as a chamber musician.
The second opportunity was that of hearing the very latest music for cello by Irish composers, with three of the programme's four pieces written in either 2009 or 2010. Since each of these three worked hard to stretch the cello's conventional boundaries, there was, cumulatively, the growing hazard of a kind of bag-of-tricks impression.
Still, taken individually, each piece offered much of interest, above all A Peace Worth Willing by Dermot McDermott. On either side of a beautiful central melody – soulful, grieving – McDermott contrives a fresh-sounding subversion of the conventional cello-piano duo by sustaining on the piano, as if by magic (but in fact with electronic bows), long, comfortable drones on open fifths. These, judiciously mixed with plucked piano strings and Johnson's silvery harmonics, produced something new and rather mesmeric.
McDermott trained originally as a mathematician and comes to composition via "diverse career paths". Not listed with the Contemporary Music Centre and with no profile to my knowledge, he is currently completing an MPhil in composition at the DIT Conservatory and might prove one to watch.
His supervisor is Gráinne Mulvey, whose Syzygy for cello and tape closed the concert. The work's creative weight is in the exciting tape part which features electronically manipulated cello sounds. They could be heavy and elemental – like an ocean tide or a jet engine – or busy and techno, but always rather putting the less ambitious writing for live cello in the penny place.
The 2004 Sonata for cello and piano by the late James Wilson was the most traditional work, avoiding extended techniques in its sombre lyricism punctuated by agitated outbursts.
Jane O'Leary's Only Gestures Remain . . ., from 2009, presents a potpourri of instrumental colours over three short movements. The last of these has a strong improvisatory feel which, though attractive in its spontaneity, eventually felt somewhat aimless.
O'Leary also played the piano, providing responsive partnership and clearly at home with the scores' non-traditional demands. Johnson, who commissioned the three recent pieces with funds from the Arts Council, proved a worthy champion, rich-voiced as needed in the Wilson but with an equal appetite and savvy in the more progressive works.
