Clarinet Trio Tour St Multose Church, Kinsale

Clarinettist Carol McGonnell, violinist Elizabeth Cooney and pianist Finghin Collins transformed what promised to be a distinctly non-festive, rather highbrow, unpopular programme into a musical experience that absolutely delighted the large attendance at Kinsale Arts Week.

The music of Igor Stravinsky is still thought by many listeners to be too dissonant; Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978), despite the ‘Onedin Line’ signature tune and his exciting ‘Sabre Dance’, is scarcely a household name; and the music of American composer, Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947) has yet to be discovered by most Irish musicians. The sheer technical brilliance, musicianship, and enthusiasm of these musicians totally charmed.

I feared that Finghin Collins’ big tone might overpower Elizabeth Cooney’s ‘Soldier’s Violin’ but the balance was perfect, and, with the clarinet commenting on her brilliant staccato and his perfectly judged accompanying, this was electrifying. Similarly, the grotesquery of the piano in the final movement was superb.

Cooney’s tone reminds me of the playing of Isaac Stern and other great international artists, and her playing in Ravel’s Habanera and Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne was not just technically perfect; it had real musical understanding also.

McGonnell’s involvement in every note, every phrase, is intense, physical, total, and beautiful. Khachaturian’s Trio gave her marvellous scope for expressive, if often virtuosic, playing. Her discovery, and the trio’s performance, of Schoenfield’s brilliantly exciting, Klezmer-style Trio was the icing on a musical cake that is well worth sampling.

* The Trio’s Church Classics Tour continues in Listowel, Limerick, Calary, and Westport