St Michael’s, Dún Laoghaire
Anon — Faronell’s Ground. Clérambault — Suite du prémier ton. Telemann — Trio Sonata in F. Bach — Fantasia and Fugue in G minor BWV542. Sonata in F BWV1035
Sunday’s recital in the organ series at St Michael’s, Dún Laoghaire, cast the instrument in a number of roles. Charles Marshall, organist and director of music at St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, was joined by two other musicians, recorder player Laoise O’Brien, and viol-player Andrew Robinson, and the programme offered just two works for solo organ, which were neatly interleaved between contrasting works that involved all three instruments.
Marshall is a musician with an interesting background.
After leaving Ireland in the early 1990s to study in England (where he was organ scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and studied the organ under Peter Hurford), he relocated to Japan, to study the satsuma biwa (a type of lute) and the shakuhachi (an end-blown Japanese flute).
He returned to Ireland in 2008, since when he has recommenced his study of the organ, this time under David Adams at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Sunday's opening work, Faronell's Ground, from The Division Flute(1722) is, in fact, nothing other than a set of variations on the theme best known as La Folia, a theme that's been widely used across the centuries.
The blend and textures of the combination of recorder, organ and viol were quite magical, with the recorder coming across almost as an organ stop with super powers of shading and inflection.
Telemann’s Trio Sonata in F offered an opportunity for recorder and viol to engage in a duet on more equal terms.
And the closing sonata by Bach, the least successful of the evening’s three chamber works, was a transposition of the composer’s Flute Sonata in E to make the piece playable on recorder.
The two solo works in this all-baroque programme were Clérambault's Suite du prémier tonand Bach's great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor.
Both were solidly, earnestly done, and controlled with real technical security.
But both also need a degree of rhetorical freedom, even occasional flamboyance, that didn’t quite materialise on this occasion.
