Dumky Trio - DvorakHow to Make the Water Sound - Deirdre GribbinTrio elegiaque, Op 9 - RachmaninovThe Fidelio Trio (Darragh Morgan, violin, Michael Atkinson, cello, Mary Dullea, piano), formed in 1994 by scholarship students at London music schools, made its Dublin debut at the RDS last night.On a first hearing, the group's playing suggests that it still has a range of problems to sort out.
Unusually, the group makes an impression that's stronger on musicianship than accomplishments of technique. Both violinist and cellist retain a lot of intonational unpredictability (with vagaries not readily attributable to particular technical challenges) and the cellist's tone often strikes the ear as undernourished.That said, the players' musical approach is generally sound, and Mary Dullea shows the sort of highly-adaptive responses that are needed from pianists in chamber ensembles. It was she who best grasped the capriciousness of Dvorak's Dumky Trio, and all three players were well attuned to the darker manner of Rachmaninov's single, mature piano trio.The most interesting work on their programme, however, was the Irish premiere of the specially commissioned How to Make the Water Sound by the Belfast composer Deirdre Gribbin (born 1967). Her music has travelled widely abroad - including premieres in London, Berlin and Saarbrucken - but has rarely been heard at home.How to Make the Water Sound, the second of a number of pieces inspired by water, is a vividly-imagined and technically resourceful piece in the mould of Takemitsu-like modern impressionism. The water drops, flows, ripples, swells, splashes, reflects, evaporates. The Fidelio Trio's playing was deftly coloured and responsive down to the lightest shadows of vapour. Only the very end of the piece failed to sustain the atmosphere that had been so successfully built up.
