Irish Times critic Michael Dervan reviews a selection of recent classical performances
Hunka, RTÉ NSO/Ignat NCH, Dublin
Enescu - Romanian Rhapsody No 1. Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky - Symphony No 2 (Little Russian)
This programme from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra was about as tuneful an occasion as you could imagine.
George Enescu's First Romanian Rhapsody was written in 1901 when the composer was just out of his teens. It has long been the composer's best-known work, though, sadly for Enescu, it's not at all typical of his mature composing style. In the face of that disparity, the popularity of the delectable Rhapsody has over the years probably impeded the dissemination of his other work.
Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony also stands out in the composer's output, as the piece in which he made most copious use of folk music - he chose material from the Ukraine, hence the nickname Little Russian. Tchaikovsky didn't share his friends' high opinion of his efforts, and revised three of the movements to produce the version that is usually performed today.
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor is among the most fluid lyrical outpourings of a composer to whom the creation of pleasing melodic shapes was second nature.
Katherine Hunka, leader of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, gave a low-key, light-toned account of the Mendelssohn. She showed some strains in intonation in the opening movement, though things seemed to settle better in the slow movement and finale.
It was probably an unwise decision by the young Romanian conductor, Mihnea Ignat, to keep the full complement of strings onstage for the concerto. A smaller group would have facilitated a happier balance between soloist and orchestra.
Ignat presented himself as a conductor who rather likes a weighty, emphatic style of delivery. His approach undersold the lighter elements in the Enescu, and made Tchaikovsky seem rather too long-winded in the symphony.
He's right, of course, to have concluded that folk-tunes can't be allowed to look after themselves in the context of a symphony orchestra. But his chosen solution was not a subtle one, and in spite of the exciting blaze he produced at key points in the Tchaikovsky, he ended up labouring things so that the repetition - which is the main barrier to this work's greater popularity - became fatiguing. Michael Dervan
Sparnaay, Castillo St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire
Eugene Friesen/Paul Halley - Cathedral Pines. Nino Díaz - Necesidad y Azar. Frank Denyer - A Book of Songs IV. Meliha Doguduyal - Cosmophobia. Siaw Kin Lee - Zhu. Matthias Kadar - Auror. Roderik de Man - Con toda el Alma
If there's an unusual challenge or undertaking for the bass clarinet, it's a safe bet that Dutchman Harry Sparnaay has had a go at it. He's had more than 500 works written for him, has recorded more than 60 CDs, and has been involved in many specialised groups, including the Bass Clarinet Collective (12 players, three of them on contrabass clarinet), the Het Trio (flute, piano and bass clarinet), Double Action (bass clarinet and harpsichord) and the Fusion Moderne duo (bass clarinet and piano).
The members of Duo Levent (Levent as in the French, le vent) are Sparnaay and his wife, Argentinian organist Silvia Castillo. Although the musical partnership was formed as recently as 2000, the duo have already had more than 40 pieces written for them.
The bass clarinet's sound travelled well in St Michael's, and filled the church's unusually open space with unexpected ease. The organ, of course, is a beast powerful enough to rival and tame a symphony orchestra, so the partnership is an unequal one, in which the clarinettist can give free rein to his full range of expression whereas the organist needs to take care not to overpower her partner.
Sparnaay, as the extent of his repertoire indicates, is something of a musical omnivore. He moved with ease from the new-age, drifting melody of Eugene Friesen and Paul Halley's Cathedral Pines through the sometimes jazzy, sometimes dissonant world of Nino Díaz's Necesidad y Azar on to the more conventionally rhapsodic urges of Roderik de Man's Con toda el alma, complete with the slap-tonguing effects which add an unexpectedly sharp percussive dimension to the armoury of the bass clarinet.
There were non-western presences in A Book of Songs IV for bass clarinet and tape, by Englishman Frank Denyer (well-sustained microtonal ululations over a drone); in Cosmophobia, by Turkish-born Netherlands resident Meliha Doguduyal (painful cries on clarinet set against clusters on the organ); and in Brunei-born Canada resident Siaw Kin Lee's Zhu (which, more than any of the evening's other works, found a way forward through dialogue between the two instruments).
The most intriguing piece, however, was by the youngest composer, Matthias Kadar, who was born in France in 1997 to Hungarian and German parents, and now lives in Amsterdam. Two parts of his Auror for organ solo showed him confidently taking the most familiar and straightforward of material and driving it progressively off the rails. Michael Dervan
