String Sonata No 3 in C - Rossini
The Capsizing Man and other stories Ian Wilson Quartet in C sharp minor
Op 131 - Beethoven
What the three works of the Irish Chamber Orchestra's latest touring programme have in common is that they are all arrangements. The Ian Wilson and the Beethoven were originally string quartets. The sonata by the 12-year-old Rossini was originally scored for a quartet of two violins, cello and double bass.
String orchestra renderings of the Rossini sonatas usually make the music sound svelte. Bruno Giuranna's approach had rather more fibre and made the young Rossini's work sound just a little bit more substantial than usual.
There was quite a deal of untidiness in the playing, however, an unexpected turn of events for this orchestra and conductor. All was subsequently explained by the high quality of the rest of the evening. The Rossini seemed to be the work which got the short straw in rehearsals.
Ian Wilson's Capsizing Man is a five-movement piece, influenced by the sculpture of Alberto Giacometti. Each movement bears a title - "The Capsizing Man", "The Forest", "The Chariot", "Seated Woman", and "The Cat" - and the music is often closely linked to the visual imagery. There's a recurring sinking feeling in the opening movement, rudely interrupted dark mystery in the second, incessant driving in the third. And there are some clear musical reference points, too (Ives's The Unanswered Question, minimalism, Morton Feldman among them) in a piece which knows exactly how to achieve its quite narrowly-defined effects. Giuranna and the ICO played the Wilson (the premiere of the composer's own arrangement of his Second String Quartet) with razor-sharp responses.
And their handling of Beethoven's late Quartet in C sharp minor offered a showcase of fine string-playing, too. But in the latter case, the composer had no hand in the arranging. The losses in the upsizing seemed to me to outweigh the gains. The plaintive qualities of the original, the sense of things that are hard-won, are lost in the more massive sound-world, no matter how finely polished the playing.
It was only in parts of the finale that Beethoven's voice seemed freed to speak with its accustomed tone in this often impeccable but ultimately frustrating appropriation.
