The World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (Wasbe) is holding its 2007 conference in Killarney, and part of the conference package is a series of public concerts by bands and ensembles from around the world.
The opening day featured the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, appearing for the last time under one of its founding conductors, James Cavanagh. It's safe to say that without his tireless dedication, this ensemble, which he founded in 1985 with Fred O'Callaghan, would not have survived the past 22 years. He shared his farewell programme with Tim Reynish, a man who is an international force pushing the cause of wind bands and ensembles.
The programme was framed with fun pieces, AJ Potter's cavorting 1957 Finnegans Wake conducted by Cavanagh, Nigel Clarke's punchily driven Samurai of 1995, directed by Reynish.
Cavanagh also conducted the 1990 Trumpet Concerto by the Hungarian composer Kamilló Lendvay, a gray-sounding piece lit up by the virtuoso solo playing of Mark O'Keeffe, and the first of the festival's new works, a Prelude and Toccata commissioned from John Kinsella. This is the second Prelude and Toccata by Kinsella to be premiered this month.
It's scored for fluteless ensemble and percussion, and opens by going against the grain of so much wind music with a calm, spare opening. The busy Toccata, exploring a narrow range around a constant thread of percussion, is less successful.
Stephen McNeff's Image in Stone, is an ambitious undertaking, pitting a solo voice, mezzo soprano Norah King, against a wind ensemble. King can make a lovely sound, but on this occasion she didn't quite manage to marry expressiveness of musical line and vivid communication of the diverse texts, in spite of McNeff's often carefully sparse scoring. Reynish also conducted Kenneth Hesketh's Vranjanka from 2005, the piece on the programme which seemed most closely to ally writing for wind ensemble with the kinds of colouristic concerns of contemporary composers in general.
There was nothing contemporary in the evening concert by the CCM Chamber Players from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. This 10-member ensemble offered rarities by Enescu (his Dixtuor with fascinating colours and long, trailing melodies, conducted by Rodney Winther) and Arthur Bird (a competent but not particularly interesting Suite from 1889, given a bottom-heavy reading under Terence Milligan).
It was unusual to see Franz Krommer's Partita, Op 78, being conducted by Winther - this eight-player work has a much more attractive flexibility when played as chamber music - but the conductor was in his element in an arrangement of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, deftly reduced for nine players by Andreas Tarkmann, and here played with fine spirit. - Michael Dervan
Wasbe continues until Sat
Quaglia, Panizza - NCH, Dublin
Duparc - L'invitation au voyage. Chanson triste. Au pays où se fait la guerre. Phidylé. Barber - Four Songs Op 13. Berg - Sieben frühe Lieder
For a lunchtime vocal recital this was a demanding programme. Its songs by Duparc, Barber and Berg are unremittingly serious and they call for a range of performance practice commensurate to their wide range of compositional styles. Making this programme work as well as it did took musical intelligence as well as technique.
Paola Quaglia is a soprano who has worked widely in opera. She is now resident in Ireland, and teaches Italian repertoire in a number of institutions, including the Royal College of Music in London. Pianist Nicole Panizza has also made her home in this country. They made an excellent partnership, with a unanimity that made one never even think about issues such as balance and ensemble.
Quaglia's strong and wide vibrato was a persistent and not always pleasing feature of the singing. However, it rapidly became clear that she thinks deeply about the character of each piece, and about the technical means of delivering that character. Her grip on French, English and German was convincing and she came across as a singer who is as aware of the words as of the music. She caught the most important aspects of each piece, from the internalised drama of Duparc's Au pays où se fait la guerre to the romanticism of Berg's Liebesode.
Technical control was not always sufficiently subtle or strong to do justice to the musical intelligence that was a constant strength of this recital.
Nevertheless, it was that intelligence, from both players - Quaglia's impeccable sense of timing, her understanding of each song, and Panizza's unfailing responsiveness - that proved to be the lasting memory of this concert. - Martin Adams
