Praeludium in E minor - Bruhns
A Pipetune for Ann - David Byers
Fantasia and Fugue in C minor - Bach
Communio - Peter Michael Hamel
Praeludium in G - Bruhns
At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners - John Buckley
Toccata - Philip Hammond
Beatrix Hermann is a German organist who lived in Ireland in the early 1990s when she studied under Peter Sweeney. Now based in her native country, she returned to Ireland for yesterday's recital of German and Irish music.
Hers was not a virtuoso treatment of Bruhns's Praeludium in E minor, such as was heard from Wolfgang Zerer earlier in this Dun Laoghaire series. Her heavier style and richer registration in the opening item were marred by sour tuning in the reeds, a feature which, happily, never showed itself as disturbingly again. Bruhns's Praeludium in G went altogether better, and her Bach was solidly grounded, showing a firm harmonic grasp of the music.
The programme showed a commitment, rare in this series, to the work of living composers, all of whose music she projected with conviction and clothed in persuasive colours, from the intertwining lines above a drone bass of David Byers' A Pipetune for Ann, to the widely-undulating waves and pedal-shadowed melody of Peter Michael Hamel's Communio, and the harsher, clustery chords and brittle high-register brilliance of John Buckley's At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners. This refreshingly different programme was nicely rounded off by Philip Hammond's Francophile Toccata, with its intricate rhythmic patterning and oscillating harmonies.Philim Drew in The Wake by Tom Murphy, at the Abbey Theatre until August 12th
