Michael Dervan witnessed Peter Donohoe playing piano at the Helix in Dublin
Peter Donohoe (piano)
The Helix, Dublin
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Beethoven -Sonata in C minor Op 13. Bliss - Sonata. Debussy - Images I & II. Chopin - Sonata in B minor Op 58.
In his recital on Wednesday Peter Donohoe offered a playing style that was very much that of the jobbing virtuoso. His tone is bright and his fingerwork is free. His tempos are generally on the fast side and he yields willingly to many of the temptations that lead to flashiness and brilliance. It's a style that leaves a stronger impression of the playing than of the music. At times the manner can seem very literal, but it's not actually literal at all: too many of the composers' dynamic markings are passed over for that to be the case, distinctions only bars apart sometimes going for naught.
But it's a manner that gives a high yield in terms of adrenaline. For my taste that still left the outer movements of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata sounding rather too helter-skelter. The easeful delivery in Chopin's Sonata in B minor dazzled at the same time as it pushed the deeper and darker recesses out of reach -the match of music and manner was best in the fleet scherzo.
The two sets of Debussy Images were presented in sharply outlined bright colours and with an equanimity that worked against any real possibility of rich suggestiveness.
It was in the evening's rarity, the angular and stamina-testing Piano Sonata that Arthur Bliss dedicated to Noel Mewton-Wood in 1952, that Donohoe's phenomenal facility was put to best use. His reading concentrated on rhythmic drive and melodic clarity, and he played with such a sense of purpose and vitality that one could almost forgive the lack of harmonic weight in his handling of a work he regards as an isolated piano masterpiece in the repertoire of mid-20th-century Britain.
