Mozart and Beethoven translated in Galway

Music for Galway: Mozart/Beethoven weekend

If you've read any of the letters of Mozart or Beethoven in English translation, the chances are you've been reading the work of Emily Anderson (1891-1962). Last weekend's two mainly Mozart and Beethoven concerts presented by "Music for Galway" celebrated the achievement of this Galway woman, who abandoned an academic career (she was appointed professor of German at UCG in 1917) to become a career civil servant, but achieved international renown in the field of scholarly translation.

Pianist Peter Donohoe's solo recital on Friday offered two sonatas each by Mozart (in A, K331, and in F, K332) and Beethoven (in C minor, Opus 10 No. 1 and in E flat, Opus 27 No. 1). Donohoe is nothing if not a committed player. His style throughout the evening was highly energised, and his Beethoven in particular was often explosive, with the finales taken at a dangerous lick. It wasn't always easy to discern the precise musical purpose of such unbuttoned playing and, although there were similar tendencies on Saturday, he kept things on a tighter, more musically-centred rein in his partnership with mezzo soprano Ann Murray.

It was odd, in a weekend celebrating the work of a translator, that neither texts nor translations of the sung texts were provided, especially for a programme containing such a rarity as the masonic cantata, Die ihr unermesslichen Weltalls Schopfer ehrt, K619. On Saturday, the omission seemed doubly a pity, since Ann Murray is so keenly a singer driven by words and the situation of the characters she portrays.

Her Galway programme ran from some of Haydn's English Canzonettas through Beethoven's Irish Songs (in an arrangement by Gerald Moore) to songs and arias by Mozart. In the confines of the Aula Maxima of NUI Galway, the vocal intensity became at times too much, moments of heavy vibrato and spread tone striking the ear in a way they wouldn't in a larger venue. But Murray was as ever, a gripping and thought-provoking performer, with Donohoe a genuinely independent force at the piano.

The music of the two concerts was interspersed with readings from the letters (none too successfully essayed by Steven Murphy and Carl Kennedy), and the weekend also included a talk on Emily Anderson by Rosaleen O'Neill, which circumstances conspired against my attending. But I spoke to Ms O'Neill later and got a strong flavour of the enthusiasm she exudes for her subject. Anderson was a very private individual who felt that any public interest that came her way should focus on her work rather than her person. Material about her life is thin on the ground, but if there is a biography to be made from what's available, Rosaleen O'Neill sounds like the person to write it.