With pianist Hugh Tinney at the helm, the once floundering Music in Great Irish Houses festival is thriving, writes Arminta Wallace
One end of Hugh Tinney's living room contains a grand piano. The other is a happy jumble of books, musical scores and piles of CDs. It's the story of his life at the moment.
On the one hand, a burgeoning international career as a solo pianist, with a fistful of teaching commitments to boot. And on the other hand? Come the summer you'll find him surfing the Web in search of programme listings for all sorts and conditions of music festivals, from Edinburgh to Schleswig-Holstein, or rifling through yet another bunch of mailshots featuring soloists and chamber-music groups from all over the world.
"And CDs," he says with a wave at the tower behind his head, "are growing out of every corner of the house." This is because, for the past three years, Tinney has been artistic director of the IIB Bank Music in Great Irish Houses festival.
"The job came completely out of the blue," he says. "I had played at the festival, of course, but . . ." Quite. So how did a solo pianist react when invited to run a chamber-music festival, especially when he was invited in September 2000, with the programme for the following year's festival scheduled to be launched in March? Did he feel like running away?
Tinney laughs and shakes his head. "No. If I'd felt like that I'd have turned it down straight away. No. I was stimulated by the idea. I thought it would be fun."
It was a tough time to take over. Financial problems meant there had been no festival at all that summer for the first time since Great Irish Houses began, as a single concert at Castletown House in 1970. For Tinney, however, starting from scratch was the sort of challenge he relished.
"At the beginning of my career, I was never much of a chamber musician, to be honest," he says.
"I had focused on the solo end of things. But pianists are a big part of any chamber-music festival - and I knew about pianists. From my years of living in London, I knew a lot about pianists who hadn't played in Ireland at all and who I thought were interesting."
Then there was Bantry. In each of the five years leading up to his Great Irish Houses appointment, Tinney had been performing with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet at West Cork Chamber Music Festival.
"Bantry is very exciting - and for me especially it was fascinating because it threw me not only into playing with other artists but also into sitting back and looking at other concerts going on. Francis Humphries [of the west Cork festival\] is a real chamber-music buff, and the Vanbrughs have a lot of contact with other artists, which is a great combination."
But the Bantry festival was tailored to a very specific design. The Great Irish Houses situation was rather different: the venues were all over the place and so, in a way, were the programmes, creating the impression not so much of a festival as of a loosely related collection of celebrity recitals in posh places. Did Tinney make a deliberate decision to move away from that idea?
"It's not so easy to pay for celebrities these days compared with 15 years ago - that's the truth of it," he says ruefully. Although he wanted to make changes, however, his priority in year one was simply to get up and running.
"A festival theme is very helpful in that regard, because it helps narrow your focus in terms of artists and repertoire. I had to decide fairly quickly, so I opted for France. I love French music, so I said OK, that's what we're going to do."
Last year he chose the theme of black and white - Ebony and Ivory - which provided a series of thematically linked yet contrasting programmes of bright and dark music.
This year's theme is Ireland, Youth and Passion. "I stole the idea from \ Kieslowski's films and the association of colour with ideas," says Tinney.
"Since we had used white last year, only green and orange were up for grabs, so I took green as youth and orange as passion. It just so happens that this is a time when there is a flowering of young artists in Ireland - singers we have always produced, but instrumentalists are now coming forward as well. This year, Irish artists, some of them established, some very young indeed, make up probably half of the programme."
The passion end of things is looked after by such chamber stalwarts as Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. "There's probably more of the passionate than the youthful," says Tinney, peering into the festival brochure. "But the Florestan Trio have put in Beethoven's Opus 1, No 1, which is great - and there are some works I don't know at all, for example Martinu's Cinq Pièces Brèves. But there I trust the artists. Good artists know what they're doing and play what they're good at."
With his current contract due to take him through another two festivals after this one, Tinney seems keen both to explore the possibility of expansion and, especially, to create a strong identity for the festival.
"Within all these parameters - financial, geographic and music - what is our place? What can we do? That's what I'm trying to find out," he says. "My experience of this festival over the past three years is that the melding of chamber music with each of the different houses is very exciting and can produce something very special."
Concerts in great houses have their drawbacks: the hauling of pianos through upstairs windows, the difficulty of putting in stages where performers are likely to bang their heads on chandeliers, the infamously uncomfortable chairs at Castletown.
But when it works, Tinney insists, it really works. "It's not easy to say what makes a venue feel better or less good when you're actually at the concert, and I'm not talking about the hallway or the chairs or whatever.
"I know the chairs at Castletown aren't the best if you have a bad back. But to me it's a combination of the shape of the room, the sound of the room, the look of the room and how it all reacts with a piano solo or a piano trio - and that room at Castletown is very conducive, somehow, to focusing your concentration.
"I remember a concert two years ago where we had the French harpsichordist Christophe Rousset playing music that was written around the same time as the ballroom at Powerscourt House was built. Looking out over the countryside, the evening light streaming in through the windows, it was just magical."
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The festival's Irish performers
Finghin Collins The 25-year-old has clocked up an impressive record of performances with top-notch orchestras and conductors since winning the Clara Haskil competition, in 1999. He plays Beethoven and Brahms, with Callino Quartet, at Kilruddery House, June 12th.
Callino Quartet Four young women who are notching up a wealth of critical acclaim, both in Ireland and abroad, the Callinos are Ioana Petcu-Colan and Sarah Sexton, violins, Samantha Hutchins, viola, and Sarah McMahon, cello. They play Schumann with Finghin Collins at Kilruddery, June 12th, and Haydn, Beethoven and Ian Wilson at Birr Castle, June 8th.
Lynda Lee Having spent several years bringing Handel to the Germans - and winning awards for her performances at the Hallé Handel festival - the soprano returns to perform a programme of Corelli and Handel with Ireland's only professional period-instrument ensemble, Christ Church Baroque (conducted by period specialist Laurence Cummings), at Castletown House, June 14th.
Orla Boylan An established name on English stages since her Glyndebourne debut, in the title role of Kat'a Kabanova. Performs songs by Dvorák, Strauss and Sibelius and a selection of operatic arias at the King's Inns, June 13th.
John Finucane Finucane is principal clarinettist with the National Symphony Orchestra and an accomplished soloist who has premiered many new works.
He plays Brahms's clarinetquintet with the Ysaye Quartet at the Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland, June
5th.
Camerata Kilkenny This incarnation of the period-instrument group, which has varied in size, comprises Claire Duff
and Maya Homburger, violins,
Sarah Cunningham, viola, and Malcolm Proud, harpsichord. The programme includes Purcell, Couperin and
Scarlatti at St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle, June 6th.
