Irish Times writers review the East Cork Early Music Festival, Gerald Peregrine and Friends and James Gilchrist and Julius Drake.
East Cork Early Music Festival
Various venues
Michael Dervan
The East Cork Early Music Festival is an itinerant festival, which this year visited just one venue twice over the course of its five days. If the ambience for Thursday's celebration of Biber at St John the Baptist Church in Midleton was warm and reverential, the feeling at the Mall House in Youghal on Friday was rather like being in a dolls' house.
The building has recently been given a facelift, and now boasts a sea-facing, glass-fronted extension at the rear. The space used for the concert by the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Soloists seems almost too small to have a stage of its own, and the stage seems almost too small for most of the purposes stages might be put to, with, on this occasion, windows to the outside world clearly visible behind the musicians.
Acoustically, the venue is on the dry side, and this may well have impeded the sense of give-and-take within the ensemble in Friday's playing. The programme offered two works each by Vivaldi and Telemann, and one each by Zelenka and Bach, with Vivaldi coming out the clear winner. The directness of the music brought out an appealing directness in the playing, and the spectacular agility of Peter Whelan on bassoon proved the highlight of the evening.
At times the music-making was redolent of what you might expect from an ensemble in need of direction. There were simply too many moments when the individual bluntness, which may work well in an orchestral context, was substituted for the responsiveness that's needed when playing one to a part.
Some of the same players appeared again with Camerata Kilkenny at Cloyne Cathedral on Saturday. Here the acoustic was far more amenable, but the creature comforts of warmth and decent seating were sadly lacking. Yet the music-making was altogether more spirited, and more unified in purpose, with star turns from the agile Pamela Thorby in two recorder concertos by Vivaldi, and the rock-solid Malcolm Proud in Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in D minor. Thorby shared the honours with Claire Duff on violin and Laoise O'Brien on recorder in Bach's fourth Brandenburg concerto.
Sunday's closing concert was given in the intimate setting of the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh - with a sea view that included a departing cruise liner - by the unusual pairing of Siobhán Armstrong, playing a wire-strung cláirseach, and sean-nós singer Bríd Ní Mhaoilchiaráin.
The tradition of the Irish harpers was an oral one, and came to be documented only after it had fallen into decline. So any attempt to reconstruct the might-have-beens from the available evidence is more than welcome.
Sunday's programme offered the obvious (Turlough Carolan), the less obvious (Ruaidhrí Dall Ó Catháin and Cornelius Lyons), as well as the downright speculative (an arrangement of Thomas Campion's Shall I come sweet love to thee?) plus the attraction of some separate sean-nós items.
The singing was at once artless and complex, the elaborate embellishments lightly touched in, the harp-playing both precise and ethereal. The strangely sweet harp sound had some of the characteristics of an aroma in the memory, exact from the moment of detection, yet intriguing because it remains so utterly indefinable.
With well-judged spoken introductions by Armstrong, this was a model of what imaginative programming can offer in this particularly challenging area of repertoire.
Gerald Peregrine and Friends
NCH John Field Room
Michael Dungan
This was no ordinary concert. Constantly changing configurations of six players performed a cellos-only musical hodge-podge ranging from Bach to Wagner to Joplin to the rock anthem Bohemian Rhapsody.
The event, a fund-raiser in support of the Make-a-Wish Foundation for children with life-threatening diseases, was organised by Gerald Peregrine who, along with fellow cellists Paul Grennan, Jane Hughes, Paula Hughes, Peggy Nolan and Arun Rao, donated time and talent for what proved an enjoyable occasion on Sunday afternoon.
In his humorous but persuasive introduction, rugby analyst and radio journalist George Hook mentioned his "appalling ignorance of music of all kinds".
Certainly "all kinds" were on offer, and it was the wide diversity that kept the playing fresh and engaging. The occasional hint of the hired ensemble at a garden fête was usually dispelled by a quick change of musical direction - for example, Wagner coming after a medley of ballroom dances.
These latter were in clever, well-balanced arrangements that disguised the ensemble's homogeneity and warmly evoked the ballroom era.
Similarly successful were arrangements of Joplin rags (irresistibly happy-go-lucky), the well-known Andantino from Schubert's Rosamunde and The Beatles' sentimental Here, There and Everywhere. What a pity none of the arrangers were listed in the printed programme.
The only original cello music was a selection from Bach's Suite No.1 in G, performed by Peregrine. He leaned towards a wholly stylised rather than dancing approach, even in the quick Courante and Menuet, which he played with thoughtful deliberation. The approach worked best in his reflective account of the slow Sarabande.
Arun Rao's unlikely but faithful four-cello arrangement of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody might have had Freddie Mercury doing the fandango in his grave, but it provided an aptly quirky close to the concert.
James Gilchrist - Julius Drake
Waterfront Hall Studio, Belfast
Dermot Gault
Beethoven - An die ferne Geliebte. Schumann - Dichterliebe
Although the Waterfront Hall Studio - previously known as the BT Studio and the NTL Studio - has been in existence for seven years now, this is the first straight lieder recital (in the sense of a recital for voice and piano only) I can recall attending here.
It turns out to be an ideal venue for lieder, the acoustics allowing the quietest, most intimate tones to carry. Having exemplary performers helps, of course.
James Gilchrist, replacing Sarah Fox at short notice, has a rich, interesting voice. It is capable of considerable range, from the ringing fortes of Aus alten Märchen to the pallid half-tones for Ich hab' im Traum geweinet.
Julius Drake's fastidious piano playing is of course familiar to Belfast audiences. To an even greater extent than the Beethoven, the Schumann is as much a work for piano as for voice.
The piano gets to end the work on its own, with its enigmatic reprise of the postlude to Mein Wagen rollet langsam, and it was played here with delicacy.
There were times when one would have liked just a little more lightness and even relaxation - in the dancing rhythms of Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen, for instance. Dichterliebe is a young man's work with a youthful volatility of mood.
Schumann's settings catch the ironic and enigmatic undertones of Heine's verse to a greater extent than I think is sometimes realised, but few performances seem able to allow this balancing self-awareness to emerge.
