Triorchic Blues - Gerald Barry
Freightrain Bruise - Michael Finnissy
Begobs III and IV - Donnacha Dennehy
Rain Tree Sketch - Takemitsu
Piano Sonata No 2 - Schnittke
In the John Field Room of the National Concert Hall Caitriona McElhinney-Grimes last week provided a "mini tour of music for piano written in the last decade". This sensible programming forces the listener to accept the music on its own terms and to establish new frames of reference.
McElhinney-Grimes played all the works with a loving attention to detail and a range of approach that encompassed, as was necessary, both the extreme of ferocity and the finest of filigree. Despite the recentness of the music, avant-garde techniques, such as plucking the strings or drumming on the wood, were avoided; however, there was a stentorian climax in the Schnittke caused by hitting the keys not with the fingers but with the forearms. In a way it was the moment that one had been waiting for; after the piled-up frenzy of Barry's Triorchic Blues and the cumulative tensions of Dennehy's Begobs, nothing less would have satisfied.
Finnissy's Freightrain Bruise was a more obvious blues piece than Barry's and offered more spaces between the notes for the listener to take some bearings; but the piece that wooed the ear more than it tried to impress was Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch, in which individual notes sometimes took on the quality of precious stones.