New Ross Piano Festival 2009
Reviewed by Dick O’Riordan, Sunday Business Post

 

St. Mary’s Church sits on a steep hill looking over the grey rooftops and winding streets of New Ross and beyond to the wide Barrow river.  It was from here that John F Kennedy’s forebears departed for the New World.


The church has atmospheric charm, but a passer-by would be hard pressed to identify it as the venue for the finest piano festival in Ireland.  In just four years, the New Ross Piano Festival has built such a reputation.  It is a niche market, but the niche is getting bigger.  Record attendances were reached again with beaming faces all round [maybe it was the sunshine?]
 

The Sunday noon concert featured BBC Classical Star winner Sophie Cashell, who sparkled with the youthful exuberance that has been the hallmark of the Dublin student’s appeal since she arrived on the scene.


Her major item, Schumann’s Carnaval Opus 9 was full of funny masked ball stuff with encrypted musical codings.  It was also a musical love letter to a pre-Clara paramour.  Although Cashell performed with insight and delicacy, the piece dragged a bit towards the end.  Overall, the rumbling drama of Liszt’s Ballade No. 2. originally intended as the finale piece, lingered longer in the memory.


The afternoon concert revealed the depth of talent that this festival offers, with superb contributions from artistic director Finghin Collins and the two Leeds International winners – Finland’s Antti Siirala and Korea’s Sunwook Kim.


Collins, with lustrous backing from the Callino Quartet, excelled with the wonderfully romantic Piano Quintet by Frank Bridge [Benjamin Britten’s teacher].  The silky skills of Kim – described as “liquid velvet” by one patron – were revealed in pieces by Haydn and Shostakovich.


The AXA-winning Siirala never fails to create excitement and he certainly did that with his passionate and heart-felt rendering of Sibelius’s Finlandia – a stirring flag-waving piece perhaps, but also a foundation pillar of his homeland.  Orchestras don’t fancy it, apparently, but audiences certainly do.


This concert and the festival had a surprise ending: a specially-written piece for three pianists on one piano by composer Eric Sweeney.  Imagine Arvo Pärt meeting jigs and reels and you have the gist.  It was a little gem, just like the festival itself.

 

Click Back to Home Page