Tonight sees the fourth in this first season's series of concerts at Ardnamona Woodland Gallery, Lough Eske in Co Donegal. Violinist Seamus McGuire, accompanied by Garry O'Brien, will perform from his Wishing Tree sequence which draws on classical and traditional music. The setting could not be more atmospheric. Overlooking the lake and surrounded by rare tree rhododendrons from Sikkim and Nepal, Ardnamona House is situated in its own, ancient oak forest. It is about five miles from Donegal Town. The house dates from the Ulster Planation but was extensively Victorianised during the late 19th century and has become a rambling villa. Ciaran and Amabel Clarke, who bought Ardnamona in 1991, felt it would be ideal for combining concerts and exhibitions. Having previously established the House On The Bray, a well-known cultural venue in Ramelton, Co Donegal, Clarke says he felt Ardnamona lent itself to a particular type of artistic concept.
"Music in a landscape requires an architectural shelter. Yes, it's an old house, but it is the Donegal landscape itself that makes this place special," he explains. A recent exhibition centred on a collection of Russian photographs from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Among the artists featured is Shostakovich, who appears in about a dozen of the pictures, including one with Benjamin Britten taken in the Moscow Conservatore. Also photographed are the pianist Richter, the poet Mayakovsky, the young Yeuvetskenko and members of the Bolshoi and Kirov companies. But the main emphasis is architectural, depicting the many faces of St Petersburg - or Leningrad as it was then - particularly of the city preparing for war. The street scenes include pictures of people queuing for wartime concerts. Stark images of power plants, state model farms and military installations document the Soviet era. In keeping with the Russian theme, Helen Haughey and John McLaughlin performed Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring on Easter Sunday as well a programme of Rachmaninov orchestral music arranged for piano duet. Jazz guitarists Mike Neilson and Tommy Halferty played last month to a totally different audience.
Throughout the 1980s Ardnamona House stood vacant. It took some three years of restoration work for it to recover. Part of this recovery included converting an old granary building into a spectacular performance space. The north gable wall was adapted to support a large, Country Gothic-style window offering view of the Blue Stacks and on a wet day, the Eas Dun Falls. First-time visitors will be surprised on entering what appears to be an old farm building, to discover a Steinway concert grand by the wonderful window with its splendid lake vistas.
Clarke's original idea had been to avail of the natural landscape by opening a garden gallery - Ardnamona, which is a Hidden Ireland guest house, is already internationally famous as a heritage garden: the rhododendrons of Glenveigh Castle originate from parent plants cultivated here. The gallery has an ongoing role as a display area for botantical prints and Victorian and Edwardian garden photographs.
Clarke's interest in classical music - including years of working as a professional piano tuner with the famous piano makers, Bosendorfer, when based at London's Wigmore Hall - alerted him to the potential of using Ardnamona's unique space for performance. The first formal concert took place in March with pianist Piotr Anderszewski and Helene Cajacka performing a programme of Brahms and Schumann songs. At night, the grounds are floodlight, while the interior lighting is provided by candles. "The Anderszewski concert was on a snowy night. You know those paper weights that you shake to create a snowfall? It was a bit like being inside one of them. During the long summer evenings we'll start later in order to enjoy the floodlit scenery."
Clarke, who is from Letterkenny is committed to the Donegal arts scene. "Donegal is about landscape. As some of our audience will always be from Derry and Enniskillen, Donegal is a lively, natural bridge between the harsher reality of Northern Ireland and the softer, more relaxed ambiance of the south."