THE IRISH TIMES
Review of Kilkenny Arts Festival 2015
Michael Dervan

The busiest musicians of the week were the players of Camerata Kilkenny. The group’s leader, violinist Maya Homburger, bore a Herculean workload, and Malcolm Proud, who was heard on organ as well as harpsichord, was not far behind.

The best of their purely instrumental appearances featured three of Bach’s best-loved concertos in nicely energised performances, the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto (with Rachel Beckett on flute, Homburger on violin and Proud on harpsichord), the Double Violin Concerto (Homburger and Claire Duff) and the Harpsichord Concerto in D minor (Proud).

Homburger’s largest undertaking was a late-night Bach Meditation, originally billed as the complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin “in one continuous flow,” but later modified to a generous selection from these works, interspersed with pieces by György Kurtág, Barry Guy (with Guy himself on double bass) as well as improvisations.

The concert overlapped with an earlier programme I was at. When I dropped into the candle-lit Black Abbey there was a gutsy rawness in the playing that reflected the enormity of the effort involved; the audience seemed fully wrapped up in the music.No extended Bach celebration would really make sense without some of the most learned compositions. Camerata Kilkenny tackled the canonic wonders of the Musical Offering (with mixed results, to my ears) and organist James McVinnie took on The Art of Fugue (with real gusto and some gaudy, in-your-face colourings, on the organ of St Canice’s Cathedral). Malcolm Proud’s later performance of the German Organ Mass on the same instrument was more luminous.





THE IRISH TIMES
Review of Kilkenny Arts Festival 2015
Michael Dervan

The real highlight of the first weekend came on Saturday evening, when Chamber Choir Ireland and Camerata Kilkenny joined forces under Paul Hillier for a performance of the Mass in B Minor at St Canice’s Cathedral. The musical approach was gentle and luminous, the full richness of this extraordinary musical score laid out with exemplary clarity, everything in view, nothing obscured.

The vocal soloists were drawn from the 18 voices of the choir, so the tone was much lighter than is usual in this work, the delivery less pressured. There were some moments when the solo singing was less than ideally refined in detail, but the gain from the overall cohesion of the musical vision more than compensated for these. It was, in short, the kind of performance to make you fall in love with this great music all over again.




THE EXAMINER

Review - Classical - East Cork Early Music Festival
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
by Declan Townsend

Various venues

****

 
Once again, this festival’s organisers have brightened up the musical landscape by inviting some of the finest practitioners in this exciting repertory to perform, and to share their enthusiasm and expertise with local players, students, and the ever-growing audience for the music of former times.

I sampled just three of the 11 festival events and, at each of them was astounded at the quality of the playing, the sense of involvement in the music by the performers, and the palpable sense of excitement and appreciation from the audiences.

Thursday night’s programme of music by JS Bach, performed by Camerata Kilkenny (directed by Maya Homburger) with soprano Anja Lipfert Poche, and Rachel Beckett (baroque flute) will long remain in my memory. Homburger’s enthusiasm, musicality, and skill obviously inspired her six colleagues and Lipfert’s beautiful interpretation of the Arias and Cantatas by Bach was a revelation.

Cantata No 82a, ‘Ich habe genug’ was, for me, the highlight of an astonishingly moving evening’s music making, that also included a wonderfully joyous, marvellously rhythmic performance of Bach’s 2nd orchestral Suite and a most moving ‘Aria, Wie lieblich’ from Cantata No 133.

Friday night was memorable for the energy, sense of phrasing, dynamic contrasts, and brilliance of violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch, who led the Cork Baroque Orchestra in music by Telemann, Schmeltzer, Vivaldi, and Clonakilty-based Justin Grounds. His prize-winning ‘Passacaglia Apia’ proved to be an intriguingly atmospheric piece.

Giving a performance of Italian music written prior to 1680, Caoimhe de Paor (recorders) and James Taylor (harpsichord) gave a display of virtuosity and musicality that brought the marvellously appreciative audience at St John’s Church, Midleton to its feet.

I particularly loved Frescobaldi’s solo ‘Canzona III’, played on tenor recorder, and Pandolfi’s adventurous ‘La Biancuccia’.

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