Irish Timeswriters review Edin Karamazovand Pekka Kuusistoand Dermot Dunneat the National Gallery.
Edin Karamazov (lute, electric guitar), National Gallery, Dublin
Leo Brouwer - Cuban Landscape with Carillons. Bach - Chaconne. Leo Brouwer - Cuban Landscape with Bells.
Bach - Partita BWV1013. Leo Brouwer - Cuban Landscape with Rumba. Bach - Toccata and Fugue BWV565.
Will the real Edin Karamazov please stand up? The lutenist who played at the Music in Great Irish Houses' Gallery Gathering at the National Gallery on Thursday was hardly recognisable as the player who has made such a favourable impression in the recording studio. And, no, it wasn't actually a matter of his spending more time on electric guitar than on the lute.
The evening was entitled "Made in Silence" and, at the performer's request, was given in silence, with the audience holding applause until the very end. All three of the Leo Brouwer pieces were performed on electric guitar, with multi-tracked recorded backgrounds as required. The arrangement of the Bach Partita for solo flute was given on electric guitar, and those of the famous Chaconne in D minor for solo violin and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ were played on lute.
What was the problem then? The Brouwer pieces went well, although they sounded a bit more new-agey than is good for them. But the Bach pieces were at times something of a muddle. Karamazov clearly wanted to reconceive them in terms of lute practice.
But neither the grand arches of the Chaconne nor the arresting rhetoric of the Toccata emerged clearly. The lute-specific effects never seemed to sit comfortably, and there were places where the performer seemed to have considerable difficulty getting his fingers around the notes. Even in the version of the flute partita, there was an effect of the musical line wafting this way and that, as if carried on the wind.
In short, Karamazov seemed to have bitten off rather more than he could chew. Yet, the short encore - I didn't catch the name - was lucidly expressive from start to finish. A puzzling event. - Michael Dervan
Kuusisto, Dunne, National Gallery, Dublin
De Falla - Siete canciones populares espanolas. Ariel Hernandez - Acollaradas. Bach - Partita No 3 in E. Stravinsky - Suite Italienne.
This was a model lunch-hour concert: colour and variety, by no means devoid of substance; informal mood mixed but intense playing; two first-class musicians clearly enjoying sparking off each other, and all for a fiver.
Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto demonstrated his versatility and extroversion in equally but contrastingly stylish accounts of Falla's best-known songs, the Siete canciones populares espanolas, whose mix of high spirits, heartache and Spanish flavours, he exploited to the full, and in the Bach Solo Partita in E major. Here his approach was one of animated liberties taken with regard to tempo and dynamics, always logically and in good taste. His masterful control was particularly evident in Bach's extra voices - both actual and implied - which were all perfectly blended.
He combined again with accordionist Dermot Dunne, whose expansive adaptation of the piano accompaniment had brought so much lively pizazz to the Falla songs, in Acollaradas by the young Argentinian composer Ariel Hernandez, who was in the audience. The seven-minute whirlwind is based on the delicious metaphor of two Argentinian folk rhythms - the zamba and the much quicker chacarera - being collared together like two horses, with the docile one intended to tame the wild one. The two played like mad, competitive tightrope walkers, on the edge, gleefully pressing to make the other lose balance first.
By contrast, their final pairing was in the sublime, sedate fusion of baroque and Stravinsky in the Suite Italien, a selection of pieces from his ballet Pulcinella. And just to prove how much distance can be travelled in an hour, Kussisto finished off with an engaging 20-minutes odyssey of far-flung free improvisation on electric fiddle.
This was the first of five "Gallery Gatherings", a mini-festival and new venture within the current Music in Great Irish Houses festival. - Michael Dungan
