A celebration of anniversaries

{TABLE} Phantasy Trio .......... Joan Trimble Trio No 2 .............. Mendelssohn Piano Quartet No 1 ..... Brahms {/TABLE} THE opening concert of the AIB Music Festival in Great Irish Houses noted two of the year's musical anniversaries. Mendelssohn died 150 years ago, and completed his C minor Piano Trio just two years earlier. Brahms, who died 100 years ago, wrote his G minor Piano Quartet in his late twenties it was, remarkably, only the third chamber work to which he gave an opus number.

The opening work in this concert by the Dublin Piano Trio Fionnuala Hunt (violin), Aisling Drury Byrne (cello), Una Hunt (piano) - was the Phantasy Trio, written in 1940 by Enniskillen composer, Joan Trimble.

It is a short work tinged with Celtic twilight and conservative in language, even by the standards of its own day. Neither its gentle melancholy nor animated lilt seemed fully expressed in this performance.

The second of Mendelssohn's two piano trios is the less frequently heard. The compositional skill of the often busy keyboard figuration can easily seem to outweigh the richness of invention, and the intrusion of a chorale into the finale is a gesture which can sound far from convincing. With the violin tending towards over projection and piano playing which was often disagreeably lumpy, the Dublin Piano Trio offered a far from satisfying performance.

There was a lot more to relish in the Brahms of the second half, in particular, the spirited, unforced musical presence of Bruno Giuranna, who was well matched in the celloplaying of Aisling Drury Byrne.