Ray Comiskey reviews the second and third in the OPW's Piano Salon series at Farmleigh in Dublin. Michael Dervan reviews the ConTempo String Quartet at St Nicholas's Collegiate in Galway.
Piano Salon at Farmleigh, Warren/Parricelli
The second in the OPW's Piano Salon series featuring jazz pianists at Farmleigh in Dublin lived up to the expectations engendered by Bojan Zulfikarpasic's superb concert, which inaugurated the series earlier in the week.
This time it was Welsh duo Huw Warren (piano) and John Parricelli (guitar) providing the music. Considering that, although they had played together before in different settings, they had been functioning as a duo for fewer than a dozen times, the degree of understanding and mutual responsiveness they showed was remarkable.
It helped that they were both blessed with commanding instrumental technique; Warren in particular benefitted, since the lovely Steinway in Farmleigh did ample justice to his expressive touch.
But it was also good for the duo, since it allowed them to pursue the most subtle of dynamics secure in the knowledge that the required range was available to them.
This was clear from the opening Mooli Baby, a tune composed by Warren and inspired by west African folk music, with guitar and piano pirouetting around each other before settling into the brisk, lithe theme. Warren's lines during his solo occasionally recalled Keith Jarrett, but they also bore his own stamp in his penchant for unusual intervals and surprising changes of dynamics. It was immediately evident that both musicians had great time and were capable of setting up an irresistible groove with the minimum of fuss.
Warren's How To Make A Shocking Coil, one of several compositions from his new CD, Hundreds Of Things A Boy Can Make, epitomised these characteristics of the duo. Making use of repeated figures, the piece allowed the pair to build up considerable momentum, with Warren reaching into the instrument to dampen strings and provide a pulse for the guitar solo and Parricelli returning the compliment on his guitar for the piano solo.
If that also illustrated the pair's sense of humour, Parricelli's Five For D, a lovely piece in 5/4, beautifully handled, allowed full rein to their lyricism, with Warren sweepingly romantic before finely detailed duo dynamics set up an equally gorgeous guitar solo.
More fetching dynamics set up an exquisite reprise to take the performance out. And the concert's one standard, Too Young To Go Steady, was full of remarkably assured interplay, with the guitar attacking the theme obliquely to ironic piano accompaniment. Contrasting solos (a fireworks display from piano and a finely constructed guitar outing) preceded an exquisite reprise in which the lead repeatedly and artfully changed hands.
The playing was not without touches of wit and humour, notably in Warren's Sheep, a calypso-like celebration of the denizens of the Welsh hills, and How To Make A Violin Out Of A Cigar Box (again from his CD).
But the second set was dominated by some of the most beautiful and lyrical performances of the evening, with Parricelli's Alfredo and Indigo Too particularly striking. And they ended with a simple, beguiling Still Hearing You which, in some respects, was the most affecting performance of the lot.
Burk/Buckley
The third in the OPW's Piano Salon series continued the successful run of the programme with perhaps the most overtly jazz-based concert so far, when Detroit pianist Greg Burk joined multi-reed man Michael Buckley for some exhilarating duo performances.
A first set that, to some degree, found them settling in, was distinguished by the opening Leon's Lair, a lovely tune composed by Buckley for his baby son. A long, virtuosic flute introduction presaged Buckley introducing the theme on soprano, where his control of this recalcitrant instrument was exemplary. Both he and Burk had fine solos before they reprised the tune, with long, lingering soprano phrases subtly nourished by piano.
Burk's When Will You Know, with Buckley on tenor, produced some interesting interplay, although the tenor sound tended to dominate at times. Tenor was also used on Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss which, though it did not strongly evoke the piece's lyricism, became a mutually engaging romp, with piano echoing the stride style and tenor engaged in some witty responses; by the time the outchorus arrived, replete with oblique hints of As Time Goes By from tenor, they had established a very effective groove. The set finished with a solo piano performance of Burk's Look At The Asteroids.
The best was saved for the second set. An untitled piece by Buckley found the composer back on soprano to great effect; although the composition had an unresolved feel to it, the piece produced some of the best duo dialogue so far.
It was a prelude to the finest performances of the evening. Buckley introduced Where Is Love? on soprano and gave full rein to the lyrical side of his playing, with sensitive piano support; both took beautiful solos before an interesting reprise.
Then they embarked on a lengthy, superbly disciplined free improvisation, with Buckley using soprano and flute and Burk, an amazingly simpatico pianist, reaching into the piano for special effects. It was a remarkable example of sustained, fruitful dialogue, constantly surprising and without superfluous gesture.
By now fully on song, they closed out the concert with Burk's paean to autumn in New England, Acorn Yellow, and the third standard of the evening, Pure Imagination. Despite the brilliance of what had immediately preceded them, both performances were in no way overshadowed and the warm audience response was ample testimony to their success. - Ray Comiskey
Galway Arts Festival
ConTempo String Quartet, St Nicholas's Collegiate
Brahms - Quartet in B flat Op 67 Jane O'Leary - ConTempo ConVersations Beethoven - Quartet in C Op 59 No 3
St Nicholas's Collegiate Church in Galway is a difficult space for musical performance. Simply put, it can be very hard for the ear to make out what's actually going on.
For this, the opening programme of the ConTempo String Quartet's concert strand within the Galway Arts Festival, the venue's sound was that of a number of none-too-well matched micro-acoustics. The performers appeared to be in one acoustic space, the great wash of reverberation in another, the listeners in a third. Where I was seated, near the front, it was often the reverberation that won out in the mix over the direct sound of the musicians themselves.
The intrusiveness of the effect varied from work to work. The opening piece, Brahms's third and last string quartet, suffered most, not because of the quartet's playing of it - which aimed to combine sprightliness and pointed characterisation - but simply because it's rather more thickly written than either of the other works and the rate of harmonic change that needs to register in it is also higher.
Jane O'Leary's ConTempo ConVersations was specially written to mark the quartet's 10th anniversary this year. On one level the piece seems intended to allow the group to strut quite freely in, as it were, their new music finery. On another it plays delicately with the fact that the ConTempos are two married couples.
O'Leary allows the real-life couples to share a lot of their material - as well as disagree about it on occasion - and she gives most of the soloistic material, not to mention the first and last words, to the ensemble's voluble cellist, Adrian Mantu. Her tendency to draw clear distinctions between foreground and background allowed the work to be heard with altogether greater clarity than the Brahms.
The last of the three quartets Beethoven wrote for the Russian diplomat Count Andreas Kyrillovich Razumovsky fared a lot better than the Brahms. This was true even in the busy finale, which the ConTempos delivered as an energetic romp.
Their approach exploited a pared-back, period instruments sound-world as freely as a more tightly-wound, fully modern intensity. The only regret was that the full detail of their endeavours could not be more clearly made out. - Michael Dervan
