{TABLE} Fantasia in C minor, K396 ............... Mozart Sonata No 13 in E flat, Op 27, No 1 ..... Beethoven Sonata No 1 in A minor, D537 ............ Schubert Three Lullabies for Deirdre, 1989 ....... John Buckley Humoreske Op. 20 ........................ Schumann Miller's Dance .......................... De Falla Cordoba ................................. Albeniz Ritual Fire Dance ....................... De Falla {/TABLE} NEIL COONEY'S piano recital last week began in a contemplative manner with Mozart's Fantasia in C minor and Beethoven's Sonata quasi una fantasia, then moved through phases of increasing excitement - Schubert's Sonata No. 1 and Schumann's Humoreske - to the stamping rhythms of de Falla's two well known dances, The Miller's Dance and the Ritual Fire Dance, separated on this occasion by Albeniz's sound picture of the lonely distant town of Cordoba. A brief interlude was provided by John Buckley's charming Lullabies.
Mozart's fantasia was played, in a suitably improvisatory, manner, its short phrases propelled by the arpeggiated chords that punctuate the piece; Beethoven's Sonata sounds much more carefully planned and Cooney played it with a cool deliberateness and an awareness of texture that was most welcome.
After the Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert sounded almost uncontrolled, as if originating in a different tradition, and Schumann's Humoreske, with its "variations but not on a theme" and its sudden changes of mood was even more wildly fantastic than the preceding pieces.