Irish Times writers review Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan at the NCH, Blue of the Night at the Sugar Club and the Auer String Quartet at St Stephen's Church.
Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan
Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan
NCH, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Mozart - Sonata in B flat K378
Schumann - Sonata in A minor Op 105
Franck - Sonata in A
In terms of technical security and musical savoir faire there was little to fault in the playing of the young Armenian brother and sister piano duo of Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan at the National Concert Hall on Saturday. Born in 1985 and 1983 respectively, these two musicians have a string of competition successes and prestigious engagements to their credit. Saturday's performances showed off their impeccable schooling and the fine polish of their playing. But there was an absence of spirit, engagement and communication in their music-making which was really surprising, especially given the nature of the violinist's successes and the high praise that has already been heaped on him.
The repertoire may of course have had something to do with the lacklustre effect on Saturday. Mozart's works for violin and piano are notoriously elusive. They resist the virtuoso approach, especially from violinists - in Mozart's eyes, it was the violinist who provided the "accompaniment". And they require a kind of musical balance that most duos seem reluctant to explore. In the Khachatryans' hands, the Sonata in B flat, K378, simply sounded cold.
Schumann's A minor Sonata is a work that is all heat and passion, qualities which the duo's level-headed, nicely-turned playing seemed to resist.
In fact it was not until the third movement of César Franck's Sonata in A, that the violinist seemed to warm adequately to his task, with a suitable operating temperature only being reached in the first of the encores, an arrangement of It ain't necessarily so from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. The thermometer of audience response clearly registered the improvement, but the main musical meat of the evening was over and done with by then.
Blue of the Night
The Sugar Club, Dublin
Peter Crawley
We're going live in three minutes, says Paul Herriott, a broadcaster so sweet in temperament you'd like to stir him into your cup of Ovaltine (the obvious companion to his sedate late-night Lyric FM show, Blue of the Night). Broadcast live, Blue of the Night's second concert managed to point up the descriptive limitations of radio, the perils of ad-hoc interviews and the curious self-consciousness of a live audience. If you were listening - in your car, in your kitchen or in your bed - it's a shame you couldn't have laid eyes on Trio Mio, a Danish folk trio. They may have initially sounded like twee tourist-shop trad, but in Nikolaj Busk they boasted a pianist who could pass for a professional surfer, a little of whose rough edges found expression in Philostate's Revenge, the trio's most vigorous and arresting composition.
With the wonderfully sardonic Swede, Peter Hedlund, who has rescued the modern chromatic nyckelharpa from the brink of extinction for some reason, we meet a man carrying what looks like the hideous love child of a violin and a guitar. "It looks like neither a nickel or a harp," says Herriott.
Mercifully, Prey - a blissfully odd Irish woodwind trio - do their own segues, and, frankly, you really must see them. Not only do they resemble wood nymphs who've just got back from Top Shop, but they introduce each piece with personal anecdotes, detailed historical research and, at one disarming moment, a little sing-song poem. They come off like a group of classroom swots, content that they are about to ace their school project. Their performance is even better, fluttering from an incantatory rendition of a Jean Francaix divertimento to an exaggerated militaristic reading of Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca. Prey are a remarkably good catch.
Which just leaves the delectable Caroline Moreau and her gypsy violinist accomplice Oleg Ponomarev, who strut through frenetic readings of Gainsbourg's Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, an impassioned Abyss and the heel-kicking send-off of Pink Martini's Sympathique before Herriott's co-opted house-band, The Phil Ware Trio, bookend the show with accomplished jazz cover versions.
The Blue of the Night concert can be heard on http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/blueofthenight/
Auer String Quartet,
St Stephen's Church, Dublin,
Martin Adams
Haydn - Quartet in D, Op 20 No 4
Bartók - Quartet No 6
Mozart - Quartet in C K465 ("The Dissonance")
The words intensity and character came readily to mind throughout this concert. The Auer String Quartet has been in existence for just over 15 years, and has all the identity one would hope for from such experience. More than many quartets, that identity seems built around the first violinist's way of playing, and that playing has an intensity that makes every moment vivid.
This was the second of two concerts promoted by the Association of Music Lovers, who in their earlier incarnation as the Limerick Music Association organised the Auer Quartet's first visit to Ireland, back in 1997. Both programmes included one quartet each by Haydn, Bartók and Mozart, and Thursday night featured Haydn's Quartet in D Op. 20 No. 1, Bartók's Sixth Quartet, and Mozart's Quartet in C K465, "The Dissonance." It was evident that these players are inclined not to pay much attention to mainstream perceptions of the music. Haydn marked the first movement of his quartet Allegro di molto, which suggests something faster than what we got. However, the feeling of leisureliness was not only because the pulse was quite slow. The playing was so absorbed in the possibilities of string sonorities that those parts of the movement dominated by long sustained notes felt almost pulseless; and when things did move, it was in a burst of energy.
The Auer Quartet could be very tranquil too, and that was especially welcome in parts of the slow movements of the Mozart and Haydn.
However, the dominant impression was of a turbulence that always held your attention, and that kept the music at high tension.
It reaped its best rewards in the Bartók, which had astonishing intensity. Listening to these Hungarian musicians made you feel quite wrung-out.
