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Erraught, Finucane, Tinney
Killruddery House, Co Wicklow
Schubert – Impromptus D899 Nos 2-4. Brahms – Clarinet Sonata in E flat Op 120 No 2. Schubert – Gretchen am Spinnrade. An die Musik. Nacht und Träume. Ständchen. Spohr – Sechs deutsche Lieder Op 103.
Monday’s recital in the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival was calculated as a process of accumulation. It opened with a piano solo, then offered piano in separate partnerships with clarinet and voice, before climaxing with all three together.
Climax, however, is not quite the right word. The piece you might have expected, Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock, is for soprano, so the singer, mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, was precluded from it.
Instead she offered Louis Spohr's Sechs deutsche Lieder, a set of mostly strophic songs that need a touch of genius in performance if they're not to bring to mind the criticism of the poet and music critic Ludwig Rellstab, who wrote, "One can show that the master repeats himself, that he remains true to his old manner, to certain forms and phrases especially loved by him to the point of boredom".
Erraught, who came to prominence in the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition of 2007, is currently a member of the opera studio of the Bavarian State Opera – she's appearing in productions of La traviataand Jenufaover the next month.
Here she was firm and clear of voice, and secure in delivery. But she doesn’t yet show the kind of natural ease with the words that would be needed to bring music like Spohr’s fully to life. John Finucane’s playing of the often florid clarinet lines got much closer to the heart of the matter. Erraught was altogether more successful in four nicely-contrasted popular songs by Schubert, where she was well supported by the characterful playing of Hugh Tinney.
Tinney’s approach to three Schubert Impromptus was a little too aristocratically earnest for its own good. But he seemed to relax as he went, and the florid arpeggiation in the last of his selection, in A flat, D899 No. 4, was delivered with delectable delicacy.
Finucane and Tinney handled the second of Brahms’s late clarinet sonatas with easy give and take in a style inclined towards understatement.
The KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival runs until Saturday.
