THERE'S A CERTAIN sense of not quite togetherness about this year's classical music programme at Kilkenny Arts Week. The appearance of looseness reached a peak with the announcement that the programme book was being reprinted with corrections.
The most important of these concern the correct venues for a number of the lunchtime events. The latest word is that Friday's and Saturday's concerts will be given in St John's Church the remainder take place in St Canice's Cathedral.
There was also the duplication of Ravel's Sonatine by Conor Linehan and Boris Berezovsky (avoided only by the latter's last minute substitution of Chopin), and the rather strange decision to place the week's two violin and piano recitals on the same day.
The first of these was given at lunchtime yesterday at St John's Church by the young Irish violinist Cliodhna Ryan, who fought shy of the billed order of Messiaen Shchedrin Handel and Beethoven, and reverted instead to a chronological sequence.
She plays with character and emotional thrust (though with rather too lavish a coating of sentimentality in Handel), and it was good to hear a young player airing with confidence some not so well known Messiaen (the early Theme and Variations) as well as a short snatch of the contemporary Russian, Rodion Shchedrin, engaging in pastiche of Albeniz.
There was a touch of drama at the start of the evening concert when the violinist Vadim Repin had to interrupt the opening work, Hindemith's Sonata in E flat, Op. 11 No. 1, to replace a string which broke. When he had done this, the violinist and his pianist partner, Boris Berezovsky, made the unforgivably short sighted decision to resume where they had left off rather than add a few minutes to the evening by starting the movement over again.
There had been a certain sense of anti climax in Berezoysky's solo recital on Sunday, but his teamwork with Repin yielded fuller blooded playing which yet never trespassed over the boundaries of sensitive musical partnership.
The Hindemith was placed at the start, I suspect, because of a certain unexpected affinity to Brahms, whose D minor Sonata followed, in a reading that was both tightly knit and propulsively argued. What a pleasure to hear a violin and piano team of equals, rather than a distinguished soloist and an accompanist (however accomplished) conforming to instructions!
A not entirely appealing thinness in the violinist's tone (a feature that's been common - a number of violin recitals at St Canice's) sent me to the back of the cathedral for the second half. There the violin sounded altogether more rounded, and the slight loss of edge to the piano tone seemed a small price to pay.
Berezovsky was particularly impressive in Grieg's G major Sonata (all the delicacy of expression you could wish for, without undue sweetness), and the duo were both on top form in Prokofiev's D major Sonata, where the Scherzo bristled with a remarkable vitality and the finale had an ineluctable, surging drive.
