Brandenburg Concertos 4, 6 & 2 - Bach
However Long That Dark - Marian Ingoldsby
Fratres - Arvo Part
The Irish Chamber Orchestra, which made one of its rockiest showings of recent years at the opening of the AerFi Killaloe Music Festival on Wednesday, steadied somewhat on Thursday.
The core of the programme was again devoted to Bach - the Fourth, Sixth and Second Brandenburg Concertos. Again, the evidence of this second instalment of the Brandenburgs was that the ICO is far from ready for the task of presenting these works as a conductorless group, with Fionnuala Hunt directing from the front as violin soloist.
Musical and technical cohesion was limited, although the confusion of effect which so consistently marred Wednesday's concert was less pronounced. There was, however, one shining exception to the prevailing looseness of focus.
The Sixth Concerto is the most unusual of an already unusual set. It is essentially a piece of chamber music for lower strings, the top lines taken by a pair of violas (Rachel Walker and Joachim Roewer), and creates a texture that's unique for its sombre vibrancy. It was communicated on this occasion with a lucid precision unique in the ICO's two Bach-dominated evenings.
The ICO presented the version of Arvo Part's popular Fratres for solo violin, percussion and strings. Fionnuala Hunt's fallibility in passages of rapid figuration seriously undermined the atmosphere of this usually haunting piece.
She was more secure in her direction of Marian Ingoldsby's However Long That Dark, a 1994 exercise in unreconstructed, nostalgic, romantic expressionism, written and delivered in a manner reminiscent of portentous film music.
The AerFi Killaloe Music Festival runs until tomorrow. Booking: 061-202583
