THE combination of strings Tand piano was not the only feature common to the two recitals of the penultimate day of Kilkenny Arts Week.
At lunchtime, in St John's Church, the cellist Adele O'Dwyer, placed herself almost side on to the audience, and in the evening at St Canice's Cathedral the pianist John York adopted a similar tactic.
With the instruments' primary paths of sound radiation benefiting only a few listeners, the effect slightly skewed the balance in favour of Danusia Oslizlok's piano at lunchtime, in favour of the players of the Beethoven Trio of London in the quartets of the evening.
Adele O'Dwyer, whose playing is informed by a natural, easy musicianship, played Bach, Schumann, Bazelaire, Mendelssohn and Bartok.
In the Bach and Schumann the piano too often masked the cello, but the more regular patterning of the Mendelssohn and the tuneful Bazelaire responded appealingly to the two players' strengths.
The evening programme included two masterpieces of the piano quartet repertoire (Mozart's in E flat and Brahms's in C minor) on either side of two works for string trio, Dohnanyi's Serenade and a piece by the Czech composer Gideon Klein.
The music of his String Trio is a wash of not yet fully digested mid century musical influences, with the busy outer movements framing a central set of variations which probe into darker emotions. This short piece was the most rewarding of the evening.
In the opening Mozart, there were uncertainties of intonation and articulation from the violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk.
His colleagues, Jeremy Williams (viola) and Richard Tunnicliffe (cello) were far more idiomatically attuned to the music. So, too, was John York, whose finely judged playing offered much to enjoy.
