St Columba’s Church, Drumcliffe
There was quite an outcry at the Vogler Spring Festival last year, when it was announced that Barry Douglas was to take over as artistic director, and that the role of the Vogler Quartet would be reduced.
In the event, Douglas backed out in July, due, said a statement from his agents, IMG Artists, “to artistic policy changes, not within the framework of his artistic vision, that have been introduced by the festival since the announcement of his position as artistic director”.
The festival, an important addition to the musical calendar since 2000, has survived, although it has shrunk from nine concerts over four days to six concerts over three. It also has a new name, Music in Drumcliffe, though still with the Voglers as ensemble in residence.
The downsizing may seem drastic, but it actually leaves the festival larger than it was back in 2000, when there were just five concerts and only two guest artists.
Saturday's Gubaidulina concert in Drogheda kept me away from the opening programme in Drumcliffe, which included what should have been the festival highlight, a performance of Osvaldo Golijov's klezmer-influenced clarinet quintet The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, played by David Orlowsky, a clarinettist with his own klezmer trio.
Orlowsky was later a suave partner to the Voglers in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, but seemed rather straitjacketed by the inflexibility of the quartet’s style. The Voglers haven’t always seemed comfortable with St Columba’s Church as a venue, primarily because their leader, Tim Vogler, concentrates too much on a manner which is more reminiscent of public rhetoric rather than personal communication. He was at his best when his delivery was calmest, and this was as true in Schubert’s sublime String Quintet (with cellist Julian Arp) as in the Mozart quintet.
On Sunday, the Oriel Trio gave a better performance of Sofia Gubaidulina's Garden of Joy and Sorrowthan they had managed in Drogheda on Saturday, though the dominance of the flute was still problematic.
The trio's harpist, Clíona Doris, was also heard in arrangements of Ravel's Cinq Mélodies populaires Grecques(with soprano Patricia Rozario), and Saint-Saëns's The Swan(with Arp on cello) as well as Gian Carlo Menotti's skilfully vacuous Cantilena and Scherzo for harp and string quartet. It seemed a shame to waste such a good player on such ineffectual repertoire – the Ravel and Saint-Saëns did not sound as well on harp as with piano, as the composers intended.
Pianist Eugene Mursky offered a well-chosen programme of Chopin, which he delivered with a focus on unfailing brilliance, which I found fatiguing. His approach to Chopin suited the shallow display of the Variations on La ci darem la mano rather better than the First Ballade, and selection of nocturnes and waltzes that had preceded it.
The best of the performances I heard was by Rozario and the Oriel Trio of John Tavener's Yeats-settings, To a child dancing in the wind, plain but plaintive music in which, in Rozario's telling delivery, small touches yielded big effects.
