Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events

Callino String Quartet, Coppey, Collins, Quatuor Danel, RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet

Bantry House

Haydn— Quartet in C Op 9 No 1 Weinberg — Quartet No 7

Mendelssohn— Cello Sonata No 2 Haydn — Quartet in F Op 77 No 2

THE WEST Cork Chamber Music Festival opened at Bantry House on Saturday with a musical anniversary sandwich. The bread was provided by two highly contrasted works by Haydn, one from either end of the composer’s output of string quartets. The filling consisted of the second and more popular of Mendelssohn’s two cello sonatas. And a flavour of the exotic was added to the filling through the String Quartet No 7 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg.

Haydn may be a great composer, but that hasn’t saved large tracts of his output from being ignored in concert.

Saturday’s programme made a corrective gesture by opening with the first quartet of his Op 9 set. The performance by the Callino Quartet was fresh and a little rough – the leader, Sarah Sexton, didn’t always have a tight enough rhythmic grip on some of the fastest passages. But her duetting with second violinist Michaela Girardi was a constant delight, and everyone was firing on all cylinders in the finale, which conveyed a kind of high-spiritedness of which Haydn had a special mastery.

The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet’s approach to Haydn’s last completed quartet, the one in F, Op 77 No 2, was by comparison more like a crowded but still sober conversation, everyone wanting to make sure that their individual contribution could be heard.

The most remarkable part of the work is the slow movement, which somehow manages to be at once wise, weary and busy, with the first violin bearing the brunt of the conflicting demands.

Mendelssohn’s D major Cello Sonata finds the composer in frequently exultant form, projecting a sweet melodiousness from the cello and whipping up an almost hyperactively arpeggiated excitement from the piano.

The cello and piano duo of Marc Coppey and Finghin Collins dealt with its storms and caresses as to the manner born.

The evening’s show-stealer, however, was the quartet by Weinberg, a composer whose cause has not been helped by the profusion of different spellings his name has been subjected to – for a long time he was known in the West as Moishei Vainberg. He was born in Warsaw in 1919, but spent most of his life in the Soviet Union (he died in Moscow in 1996), where he became a close friend of Shostakovich, in whose musical shadow he has long had to live.

His three-movement Quartet No 7 dates from 1957, and the performance by Quatuor Danel from Brussels carried an exceptionally potent charge.

There are, to be sure, aspects of the work that breathe the same air as Shostakovich, harmonic sidesteps, the introduction of vernacular dances, and evocations of classical tune and accompaniment routines. Yet, from the calmly intense opening to moments where the world seemed set to burst from the pressure of trying to express the inexpressible, the Danel presented the piece with relentless and gripping focus. It was as if Weinberg had persuaded them that their very lives depended on it. The West Cork Chamber Music Festival continues until Sunday MICHAEL DERVAN

Byrne, RTÉ NSO/Mihnea

NCH, Dublin

There are many ways to put together a concert with a title like Celine Byrne Opera Gala. But whoever devised this programme produced one the most effective events of its kind.

Among the younger generation of Irish singers, soprano Celine Byrne has risen rapidly. This evening showed why next year will see some truly prestigious engagements. She has presence, a powerful and flexible voice, and the intelligence to understand how music and words work together.

Instead of the too-common conglomeration of contrasted arias, we heard a well-assembled succession of orchestral and vocal works, with the instrumental music acting as a linking hinge between groups of vocal works.

For example, Spanish-flavoured songs by Bizet and Delibes were followed by Chabrier's España, which in turn was followed by songs by Granados and Luna; and that grouping was rounded off with Suite No 2 from Falla's The Three-cornered Hat.

Equally neat was the playing of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with the Romanian conductor Mihnea Ignat. Ensemble and rhythmic vitality were tight yet flexible, and unanimous in gesture.

Balance was sometimes messy in loud tuttis; but not so in a scintillating account of the Intermezzo from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. Long-phrased, highly coloured and astonishingly intense, it elicited roars of approval from an audience that was there mainly for the singing.

All the vocal music was composed between 1875 ( Carmen) and 1918 ( Gianni Schicchi); and although Celine Byrne is versatile, she was especially at home in the Italian verismo music that dominated the second half.

Her characterful account of Stridono lassùfrom Leoncavallo's Pagliacciwas a treat; but above all, I remember her vivid and subtle singing of Vissi d'artefrom Toscaand Un bel difrom Madama Butterflyboth by the verismo king, Puccini. MARTIN ADAMS

Kearns, Dumont

NCH, John Field Room

Places for the biennial Cardiff Singer of the World are hard earned, yet since the competition was first held in 1983 Ireland has fielded an entrant every time bar one (1995). Dublin-born Helen Kearns was chosen from among more than 600 international applicants of all voice-types for one of this year’s 25 coveted positions. Following baritones Howard Reddy (2005) and Owen Gilhooly (2007), Kearns was our first soprano competitor since Ailish Tynan (2003), for whom winning Cardiff’s Song Prize triggered a quick rise to stardom.

Kearns's Friday lunchtime programme revisited some of her Cardiff items from a fortnight earlier. Spanning German, Italian and French, it included Ännchen's Act II aria from Weber's Freischütz, and numbers for the titular heroines of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Massenet's Manonand Gustave Charpentier's Louise.

The vocal glory demonstrated in these operatic choices had proved almost too supreme for the more intimate, more literary world of three lieder by Strauss.

A tenser lyricism would have benefited the German consonants and, in Donizetti, the Italian coloratura. It was thus the rich vowels and sleek legato of the French-texted pieces that brought out Kearns's finest artistry, notably in three of Ravel's Cinq mélodies populaires grecques.

Her evident affinity for music in this high-toned style augurs well for an NCH performance on September 18th of Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergnewith the RTÉ NSO under Pascal Rophé.

Accompanying Kearns with irresistible deference was her husband, the prodigious French pianist François Dumont. His solo contributions to the programme were by Mozart and Chopin. All I can say is that a more fascinating Sonata in A K331, or a more ingenious and tasteful Polonaise Op 53, can scarcely be imagined. ANDREW JOHNSTONE