Concerts at Anaverna House

Wednesday 3 February 2010 at 8 pm

John Finucane, (clarinet) Gabriela Istoc (soprano) & Dearbhla Collins (piano) at Anaverna on Wednesday 3 February at. 8 pm.

Messager - Solo de Concours, clarinet & piano

Poulenc - Sonata for clarinet & piano

Poulenc - Les Chemins de l’Amour

Dvorak - Song To The Moon (Russalka)

Arnold - Sonatina for clarinet & piano

Lehar - Vilia (Merry Widow)

J Strauss - Czardas (Die Fledermaus)

Cilea - Io Son l’Umile Ancella (Adriana Lecouvreur)

Lehar- Meine Lippen Sie Kussen so heiss (Giuditta)

Charpentier - Depuis le Jour (Louise)

Burgmuller - Duo for clarinet & piano

Schubert - Shepherd on the Rock

John Finucane is principal clarinet with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra and also a well known conductor.
Gabriela Istoc is a post graduate student at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. In October Gabriela won a major prize at the Iris Adami Carradetti Competition in Italy and, this week, she is competing in the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in Dublin.
Dearbhla Collins is an accomplished and prize-winning pianist with a distinguished performing career

Review by MICHAEL DUNGAN in the IRISH TIMES

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Burgmüller – Duo, Opus 15.

Archduke Rudolph – Clarinet Sonata in A. Schubert – The Shepherd on the Rock.

JOHN FINUCANE,
principal clarinet with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, confined the
programme for his chamber recital with pianist Dearbhla Collins and soprano
Gabriela Istoc to a
stretch of just 22 years. All three works were composed between about 1812 and
1834 by three men who died within eight years of each other after relatively
short lives.

The shortest was that of Norbert Burgmüller, born in 1810, the same year as
Chopin and Schumann, but dead at 26 from drowning during a fit.

His 10-minute Duo in E flat is in three movements played without break and is
written in an early romantic style.

The Sonata in A by Archduke Rudolph is stylistically similar but slightly more
adventurous – hardly surprising given that the composer’s teacher of more than
20 years was Ludwig van Beethoven.

This was the same Rudolph, a great friend and patron to Beethoven, who
commissioned from him such works as the Hammerklavier sonata and the Op 97
Archduke Trio.

Both works feature lyrical melodic lines, which Finucane played with his customary fluidity of
tone and shaping, often in delightful interplay with the right hand in the
piano.

Collins masterfully drew out whatever was warm and charming in often routine
piano parts (Alberti bass lines, repeated chords, and so on).

The performances left you feeling that this visit to a remote corner of
repertoire was one worth making.

The concert ended with Schubert, whose miniature dramatic cantata, The Shepherd
on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D965), is from the last months of his
life in 1828.

Romanian soprano Istoc
is doing postgraduate studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where Finucane and Collins both
teach and whose banner might well have flown with justified satisfaction over
this fine concert.

It’s a gem of a piece, with its Tyrolean motifs, and quite operatic, with the
shepherd as a trouser-role for the soprano, who narrates the longing “he” feels
for the girl across the valley whom he can’t see until springtime.

Although she engaged more, and deeply, with the music than with her audience, Istoc was an excellent
shepherd – light, warm-toned, and so youthful in voice and appearance that,
curiously, she might as easily have been the object of the shepherd’s
attention.