The Romancing Rebellion concert received its third presentation last Saturday night at the RHA Gallery. It looks at musical responses to 1798, largely via Moore's Irish Melodies and appropriations of them up to the present.
Romancing Rebellion ties together 28 items and two hours of music, partly by placing songs in thematic groups - parting, battle etc. Then there are the well-researched programme notes and spoken introductions by Kathleen Ty nan (soprano), who devised the concept. The subtly-changing lighting, designed by Stephen McManus, complements Sy nan O'Mahony's striking, period-inspired costumes.
What a range of musical responses there have been to the eternal ideas found in Moore! Kathleen Tynan and the Irish Piano Trio - Michael d'Arcy (violin), Annette Cleary (cello) and Dearbhla Collins (piano) - performed settings for voice with either piano trio or piano. The latter included Moore's collaborators, Stevenson and Bishop, 20th-century Irish arrangers such as Herbert Hughes, plus high-art composers who used the material as a platform for re-composition. Of these, Berlioz's Elegie, Britten's Oft in the Stilly Night and Fleischmann's Marbhna Eoghain Ruaidh Ui Neill were especially impressive.
T.C. Kelly's piano trio arrangements of O'Carolan were sensitively played and it was interesting to hear the muscular result when Joan Trimble mingled traditional melodies in her Phantasy Trio of 1943.
The stylistic certainty of Beethoven's arrangements for piano trio and voice was in contrast to Union (When the Planets are in Place), also for trio and voice, which was specially commissioned from Pierce Turner. The text links the aspirations of 1798 to those of today. Turner's music, no less than Beethoven's, is of its time. Its well-crafted, crossover eclecticism - Lloyd Webber-ish in principle, though not in detail - evades artistic striving.
