Marchenerzahlungen Op 132 - Schumann

Violin Sonata No 1 - Brahms

Quartet for the end of time - Messiaen

There was a double disappointment at the Limerick Music Association's Dublin concert on Saturday when the evening lost the two major trios that had been coupled with Messiaen's Quartet for the end of time.

The printed programme revealed the substitution of Brahms's First Violin Sonata for the originally advertised Horn Trio, and just before the concert started it was announced that Mozart's Clarinet Trio was to be replaced by Schumann's Marchenerz ahlungen, a late work for the same instrumental combination of clarinet, viola and piano.

Schumann's romantic "fairy tales" identified three distinctive musical personalities, clarinettist Michael Collins contributing with English reserve, Dutch viola player Isabelle van Keulen taking an altogether more aggressive stance, and Finnish pianist Juhani Lagerspetz finding a musicianly middle-ground to marry the two extremes. It was interesting in Brahms's First Violin Sonata to compare the Dutch player's clearheaded outspokenness and general fullness of tone with the rambling, free-fantasia style of Anne-Sophie Mutter, heard at the NCH in October. Van Keulen and Lagerspetz impressed as the more reliable communicators of the musical essentials.

Messiaen's Quartet, a profound, worshipful meditation on time and eternity, was completed when the composer was imprisoned in Stalag VIIIA in January 1941. It's one of the most remarkable works of the century and rarely fails to generate heightened responses from players and audiences. The darkened, chilly confines of the Peppercanister Church on Saturday proved no exception.