Reviews

Anne Leahy (organ), St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire. Martin Adams writes.

The last recital in the 29th season of summer concerts at St Michael's was given by the series organiser, Anne Leahy. She was effusive in her thanks to those who helped put on the series, and equally effusive in talking about herself, the music, and people she knows. Such is her enthusiasm that she carries her audience with her.

Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B Minor BWV544 was steady, and more deliberate than most Baroque music I have heard from this musician. The gains were in clarity of texture, and in precision and consistency of articulation. I would gladly have sacrificed some of that controlled detail for a more risky rhythmic style. Yet this was the work of a performer who had thought carefully about the music, and knew what she wanted to do with it.

The high point of the Baroque pieces was a well-paced account of the choral prelude on Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele BWV654. In this extraordinarily florid, aria-style work, Anne Leahy showed a true understanding of ornamentation's expressive purposes.

Another strong point was the stylistic distinction made between music of differing periods.

Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in C minor is inspired by Bach, but its Romantic spirit was conveyed through a performance more line-driven than the earlier music, even though it was not as technically secure.

The playing of 20th-century music was distinctive too, from the atmospheric simplicity of David Byers's little A Pipe Tune for Ann (1984), to the sense of improvisation in Alain's Fantaisie No. 2 (1936). In the same composer's Litanies (1937), the playing's free-spirited, go-for-it panache made a suitable ending to a well-devised programme, and to the series.

Conor Biggs (bass-baritone), Pádhraic Ó Cuinneagáin (piano)

National Concert Hall, John Field Room, Dublin

By Douglas Sealy

Conor Biggs has an uncanny ability to empathise with the works he performs and the rare gift of giving equal value to words and music.

In Friday's lunchtime recital in the NCH John Field Room, he plumbed depths of feeling in 12 of Brahm's folk song settings, bringing a welcome variety of dramatic emphasis to these little evocations of lovers' vicissitudes.

Pádhraic Ó Cuinneagáin at the piano accompanied with perfect tact, demure when required and rising to emotional peaks without excess.

James Wilson's song cycle First Frost sets seven poems by Kevin Nichols. As the title suggests, the poems are about autumn moving into winter with hints of deprivation and death: a lyrical postlude built around Goethe's last words - "More light!" - offers a gleam of consolation.

As often, James Wilson has chosen challenging texts. The very first line - "Morning lies like a newly sharpened pencil over the blotter" - is an unlikely candidate for musical treatment and the poems are full of dense metaphors which demand study and reflection before comprehension can be attained. But the composer has respected the words, their meanings and rhythms, and allowed the vocal line to be pre-eminent.

Conor Biggs does not so much follow its course as seem to create it ab novo, as he is swayed by the ebb and flow of the thought. The piano accompaniment is suitably chilly and undemonstrative, but with shifting colours as on the surface of a frozen lake.

Ó Cuinneagáin was perfectly in tune with the mood, and it would be hard to conceive a better interpretation of the music than that presented by this combination of singer and pianist.

Ensemblissimo

NTL Studio, Waterfront Hall, Belfast

By Dermot Gault

Dublin audiences will be familiar with the four players who make up Ensemblissimo, but performances of Baroque music on period instruments are still something of a rarity in Belfast, and performances which use the theorbo as a continuo instrument even more so.

According to one authority, this large member of the lute family would have been used at the time to reinforce the bass line rather than share the function of the harpsichord, but in this concert Richard Sweeney did both. When David Adams's harpsichord fell silent in the Sarabande from the Leclair Recréation, the effect of having a theorbo accompaniment was agreeable - but otherwise having harmonic support from two plucked stringed instruments made for heaviness and one missed the more solid underpinning a bowed string bass can provide.

Apart from that, there was a lot to enjoy: the wood dove-like tones of Fiona Murphy's baroque flute, the warmth and agility of Sarah Moffatt's violin playing (well demonstrated in the Arne Sonata, which may date from his time in Dublin in the 1740s), the general deftness and style of the ensemble. At times, one wanted more projection, and a stronger feeling for the Affekt. But the only disappointing item was the first, and only then because while this piece survives in Bach's handwriting, it's hard to believe that it is his original work.

The most rewarding item was the Leclair Recréation, a delightful six-movement suite, with a particularly catchy finale.