It's a case of the more the merrier for Dresden quintet

Having added to their numbers, the Dresden Group is looking forward to treating music fans to an expanded repertoire at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, writes MARY LELAND

IF THERE IS ANYBODY left who still wonders about the usefulness of an arts festival to the local economy, the people of Kilkenny need only point to the visit of the Dresden Group from Germany next week. The basic formation of five musicians is that of the Kapellquintett, which has been extended to 11 to allow for a more variable programme, and in something like the journey to St Ives, that 11 is expanding to include family, friends and colleagues, so that a schedule of four concerts becomes an international gathering.

Again, although the essential purpose is performance prefaced by several days of rehearsal, the Dresden players bring something of a holiday atmosphere with them, making the festival the centrepiece of a longer stay in Ireland and spreading well beyond the sojourn in and around Kilkenny itself.

About to begin a couple of weeks in west Cork, the quintet's leader Julius Ronnebeck discovered Kilkenny when a concert tour early last year showed a one-day gap in Dublin. Wondering what else might be happening in terms of classical music in Ireland in January, he got in touch with Susan Proud, organiser of the year-long Music in Kilkenny series of concerts, who invited the Kapellquintett to the Parade Tower of Kilkenny Castle.

"They were fantastic," she says as she remembers deciding to book them for the festival, and Julius Ronnebeck also recalls the warmth of the reception which greeted their performance.

"That was a very mixed programme, from Mozart to Ligeti, and we found that the audience there seems to have a special taste for new things. As I understand it, they have a great tolerance for the avant garde, and not just in music but in other art forms as well. So that makes it very interesting for us."

THE QUINTET ITSELF is part of the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra, a prestigious institution formed originally in 1548 and based at the Semperoper. A native of Stuttgart, Ronnebeck has been playing the French horn there for the past 13 years, enjoying the double life of an internationally renowned symphony orchestra whose core business is opera accompaniment.

"Playing for the opera makes you very flexible as a musician, you have to listen to what is happening, it can't all be rehearsed. And that is a very short step to chamber music, which lives off communication and reaction and making it happen in the moment," he says.

In this case, much of the moment for the Dresden Group is 20th century chamber music and the four programmes for Kilkenny have a thematic coherence which Ronnebeck himself admits is not easy to see - "but it is there!" As he explains it, the theme becomes both simple and obvious, nothing more, or less, than an exploration of the different approaches to chamber music through the past hundred years or so.

"The big classics are there, of course, they're just too tempting to leave out, but along with Mozart and Schubert we have Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mahler, Haas, Martinu, Eisler and Roussel. There are the differences, for example, between Shostakovich and Barber, a Russian and an American almost of the same generation. Maybe much of the 20th century's music is an acquired taste, but the more you hear, the more you listen to it, the more you hear in it."

In Ronnebeck's musical philosophy, there is only good music and bad music, like, as he says, good beer and bad beer. So the Schubert octet in F major is there because "we absolutely want to play it even though it doesn't really fit into the idea." Also, perhaps, because it requires the biggest ensemble and gives the newly-augmented Kapellquintett the chance to get as many members playing together as possible.

"The repertoire for five wind instruments is quite limited, even in the 20th century, so when arranging four successive concerts if you don't want to play simply everything that exists, you must expand the group. So we formed up as a string quartet, a wind quartet, a double bass and a piano. That opens up lots of opportunities, although there is no single piece that everyone can take part in together."

Togetherness is part of the deal; these are virtuoso musicians who have known one another and worked with one another since their student days although now engaged all over Europe. The 11 instruments are two violins and one each of viola, cello, double bass, horn, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and piano.

"The Shostakovich quartet for piano and trio is an amazing piece, and then there's the Mozart quintet in E flat, for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon which Mozart himself considered one of his best compositions ever. Plus, we have a brilliant pianist in Paul Rivinius, who just wanted to come along with us."

THAT TOUCH OF insouciance belies the seriousness with which Ronnebeck and his young colleagues treat their commitment to Kilkenny, an engagement which will be arduous in that this will be their first opportunity to play together in these varied groupings and Ronnebeck anticipates that the rehearsals will be strenuous.

"Yes, we are all musicians, but we will have to work, this will not be a usual experience for us." Nor for the audiences who will want to be part of what promises to be a mouth-watering series of concerts in castle, cathedral and Castalia Hall in Ballytobin.

• The Dresden Group will be performing on Aug 13, 14, 15 and 17.

[ www.kilkennyarts.ie ]