West Cork Chamber Music Festival

THURSDAY was another full day at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. Ian Wilson's Towards the Far Country was given its Irish premiere by the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet at the main evening concert.

The piece takes its inspiration from seven paintings by Paul Klee. Heroic strokes of the bow, Pastoral rhythms, Hammamet with mosque, The legend of the Nile, Ad marginem, Death and fire, and Captive. Some of the musical connections are very direct a series of chunky, double-stopped chords, a protracted section in "pastoral" 6/8 time, some fluid oriental glissandos.

On a first hearing in a not entirely satisfactory performance, it was the less dense writing towards the end of the work which made the strongest impression.

Robert Simpson's Quartet for horn, violin, cello and piano received a rare hearing earlier in the day from Stephen Stirling, Anthony Marwood, Steven Doane and Joanna MacGregor. This is an unusually knotty piece, with all the appearance of often working modernistically against the sort of lucid argument Simpson favours.

Schubert's Trout Quintet (MacGregor, Marwood, Doane plus Roberto Diaz on viola and Duncan McTier on double bass) provided a light core to the day's music in an al fresco performance that danced every bit as much as it sang.

And at either end of the day's proceedings were two very different works with clarinet. Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio was rather marred by the brittle contribution of the pianist, Susan Tomes. The art of clarinettist Romain Guyot was heard to far better advantage in the sombre radiance of his late night performance of Brahms's Clarinet Quintet with the Vanbrugh Quartet.