Reviews

Reviewed: McGonnell, Tinney Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

There was nothing understated about this recital by two of Ireland's most eminent instrumentalists. Pianist Hugh Tinney and clarinettist Carol McGonnell defied the biscuit-dry acoustics of Dún Laoghaire's Pavilion Theatre with vivid interpretations and keen virtuosity.

Beginning and ending with 19th-century works that placed them both on an equal footing, the two seemed to be in complete agreement about how the music should go. They brought poise and satisfaction to the sage musings of Brahms's Sonata in E flat Op 120 No 2, and fearless dash to the hell-for-leather precipitations of Weber's Grand Duo Concertant.

Tinney looked back to the 18th century with Mozart's Sonata in A minor K310, and McGonnell advanced to the 20th and 21st with Franco Donatoni's Clair I (1980) for solo clarinet, and Flicker, a recent, experimental work composed for her by Michel Galante.

It was clear from Mozart's opening appoggiatura that Tinney was out to challenge rather than charm his hearers. Following his own instincts rather than the composer's scanty dynamic scheme, he opted for a forthright forte when the music suggested it (and perhaps when it didn't).

With forbiddingly crystalline surface details, cold melodies and moody contrasts, this was not Mozart for the faint-hearted. McGonnell's sense of the music's direction and flow was so consuming that she seemed not just to play, but to act out the phrasing.

With the Romantics, she rounded-off each superbly smooth cantabile with a gentle twirl of the instrument; with Donatoni, she almost danced her way through the febrile scatterings of notes and portamentos. All was concentration, however, in Galante's astonishing novelty. Against skeletal piano counterpoint, McGonnell's deft, uninterrupted and multi-layered execution seemed a miracle of fingering and breath-control.