The Music in Great Irish Houses festival promises a colourful journey through 300 years of artistry, writes Eileen Battersby
Chamber music, originally composed for the intimacy of the salon rather than the public setting of the concert hall, remains elegantly at home in the period house drawingroom. The image of performers set against the backdrop of formal gardens graced by evening summer light provides the enduring visual element of Music in Great Irish Houses; the chamber repertoire supplies the genius.
Since its inception in 1970, this nine-recital series has invariably proved evocative and romantic. The houses, including the Palladian grandeur of Castletown House, Co Kildare, and the relaxed beauty of the Orangerie in Killruddery, Co Wicklow, capture the mood of the now lost world in which Europe's great composers lived and worked. Castletown House, Ireland's largest and most splendid Palladian-style mansion, hosted the first of the festivals and has always been central to it. Completed about 1722 for the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Connolly, it marks the culmination of the designs of Alessandro Galilei, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and finally, Sir William Chamber. This year, it is the stage for what will be the festival's strongest baroque programme, as performed by Italian ensemble Europa Galante (see panel).
Killruddery House, home to the Earls of Meath since 1618, is an Elizabethan Revival mansion. Its wonder is its gardens, the earliest surviving formal gardens in the country. The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet will perform Boccherini's Quartet in C minor Op 2 No 1 in the famous Orangerie, with its enchanting balance of glass, greenery and slanting natural light.
The festival artistic director, pianist Hugh Tinney, sees the programme as reflecting a geographic region "rich in terms of composition and performance". In looking to Italy and Spain, he has drawn on the gifts of soloists such as pianists Andrea Lucchesini - whose juxtaposing of five sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) with six encores by a living Italian composer, Luciano Berio, who was born in 1925, should be fascinating - and the 1991 Dublin International Piano Competition winner, Enrico Pace, as well as the aforementioned Europa Galante and Spanish ensemble Cuarteto Casals.
Pace is performing his programme of Beethoven, Schumann and Liszt at Fota House, Co Cork - the first time this attractive venue has featured in the festival - and at Killruddery. Tinney, whose own performance repertoire is predominately 19th century works, has always loved baroque music as a listener. "I have to admit that many of the baroque works to be performed during the festival will be new to me - which is exciting."
The festival theme may be Latin, but the programme is diverse - there is no ignoring the equally powerful presence of the German and Viennese schools charting the evolution of the classical to the romantic; violinist Fionnuala Hunt and her Tango Orchestra are performing Mozart and Haydn. Pace is playing Beethoven and Schumann. Lucchesini's recital in the ceremonial dining hall of King's Inns also includes Beethoven, while Catherine Leonard, Guy Johnston and Charles Owen will perform works by American composer Samuel Barber and Messiaen, along with Schubert and Mendelssohn, at Slane Castle, Co Meath, and Fota House.
YET IN FOCUSING on the early Italian composers, the programme provides the listener with a chance to consider the evolution of baroque music before the emergence of Bach. The inclusion of Corelli's Concerto Grosso Op 6 No 4 to be performed by Europa Galante, is one such opportunity.
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) was a composer, violinist and director of instrumental ensembles, born into a non-musical family of wealthy landowners. His output was small, extending to little more than six collections of instrumental music, each containing about 12 individual works, and some other pieces, all written as either solo sonata, trio sonata and concerto, yet his influence was to determine the form, style and technique of music throughout Europe. His approach was highly disciplined and his legacy classic, with the effect utterly captivating. He was the first to make the distinction between the church and chamber sonata.
Corelli's music possesses palpable light and originality, even if today it can appear at times to be surprisingly simple and conservative in comparison with, for example, that of Vivaldi, who was more progressive. Much of Corelli's biography has become confused with anecdote. However, it is clear he was a gifted violinist and enjoyed a reputation for "remarkable mildness of temper". Unlike many great composers he was successful in his lifetime, collected paintings and was rich, thanks to the patronage of two cardinals and most importantly, the shrewd publishing of his work, much of which ran into multiple editions. Many of his students became famous violinists.
Considering the dramatic agonies that dictate the existences of many composers, Corelli's life appears so uncluttered as to permit full concentration on his technical and compositional achievement. He was also unusual for his time in that he wrote no music for the voice - a fact which leads to the observation that there is no vocal work included in this year's festival.
Born 90 years after Corelli, Luigi Boccherini, almost an exact contemporary of Haydn, is central not only to late Italian baroque but to the evolution of the string quartet. He was the son of a double bass player and cellist. He grew up surrounded by a family of musians, dancers and poets.
Having made his debut as a cellist at 13, he performed in the first public string quartets in Milan. When he was 23, he travelled to Paris and then Madrid, where he settled, securing the patronage of the king's younger brother. He also wrote music for Prince Frederick-William of Prussia. But Boccherini's life was difficult. Living in Spain isolated him musically. His French publisher served him badly, refusing to return manuscripts and demanding changes to suit the popular taste. His first wife died young, as did two daughters and when he remarried, that wife also died and with her, another daughter. He wrote at least 11 cello concertos, and almost 100 string quartets. The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet perform his Quartet in C minor Op 2 No 1 in Killruddery, on June 17th, three weeks after the 200th anniversary of Boccherini's death.
LITTLE OF THE sorrows of Boccherini's life affect his music. Keith Pascoe of the Vanbrugh is an ardent champion of Boccherini's work and believes it to be woefully neglected. Now is the time for a major celebration of Boccherini, as a pioneer whose achievement was largely distilled into the music of late 18th century Vienna, which itself set the stage for the great age of classical music heralded in 1800 by the artistically maturing Beethoven.
The piano sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, mysterious son of the domineering Alessandro, are unlike any other written at that time. The younger Scarlatti, who was born in Naples in the same year as Bach and Handel, moved to Portugal where he worked in the Royal Chapel. In 1728 a royal marriage brought him to Madrid, where he settled. In Italy, his compositional output had been for the voice; his father composed operas, sacred choral music and secular vocal work. However, on moving to Spain Scarlatti concentrated exclusively on sonatas for harpsichord and appears to have written about 550 of these virtuoso, rather enigmatic one-movement pieces.
In addition to performing Boccherini and Beethoven, the Vanbrugh Quartet will also play Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor, with Hugh Tinney, in Killruddery. "I've never performed it. It is one of the great piano quintets. There are touches of Liszt, and it also points the way to Fauré and Debussy."
With a programme spanning from early Italian baroque, to Henry Purcell, on through Beethoven, Chopin's 24 Preludes Op 28, Schumann and Shostakovich to Messiaen and Berio, this is a varied inventive festival which promises a colourful journey through more than 300 years of musical genius.
IIB Bank Music In Great Irish Houses festival, Jun 9-18. Tel: 01-6642822. www.musicirishhouses.com