Everyone has their own moment from when the Christmas countdown begins; for chamber music enthusiasts, this event has to be the Fidelio Trio’s Winter Chamber Music Festival that takes place annually at the end of November. Indeed, there is something extremely pleasant in having a group of first-class musicians perform in the library of Belvedere House, complete with Christmas tree and interval refreshments, on the leafier end of DCU’s St Patrick’s Campus. Amongst the themes included in this year’s festival were the hundredth anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré, music from Bohemia, fusions with Irish traditional music, and, of course, mainstays of the standard chamber repertoire from Brahms, Schumann and Schubert. 

The opening concert saw the Fidelio teaming up with uilleann piper Cillian Vallely for a programme of new music inspired by the paintings of his father John B. Vallely. As a starting point, Vallely senior had given several of the commissioned composers various art works that acted as the creative catalyst for the resultant compositions. 

The first item on the programme, Swaggering, was written by yet another member of the Vallely family, the renowned concertina player and composer Niall Vallely. This first section combined superimposed polyrhythms in each part of the trio that were later joined by the pipes to form a repetitive minimalist texture. This gradually unwound itself, leading into a more introspective middle section of sustained sonorities, before returning to the polyrhythms of the first section to form a nice upbeat opening to the concert.

The somewhat offhand title of Shaun Davey’s Happy Out might give one the impression that we were in for another lively composition, but the first movement was a moving if slightly sentimental version of Davey in full Brendan Voyage mode. The movement featured lush writing for the piano and string parts in a very assured demonstration of the idiom that has won him plenty of admirers over the years. The second movement was more in keeping with the sentiments of the title and was basically a single jig, mostly for the uilleann pipes and piano, with a swinging rhythm nicely orchestrated for the accompanying parts.

Irene Buckley’s Stray was an exploration of gentle, wispy glissandi and harmonics on the violin and cello combined with resonant single notes on the piano, and an electronics part that advanced and receded. This created an atmospheric canvas for what sounded like fragments of a lament played by Vallely who exchanged the uilleann pipes for the low whistle in this piece.

If Davey’s piece favoured a fusion of Irish music with a romantic harmonic language, Neil Martin’s Fite Fuaite favoured a more impressionistic harmonic palette from its outset with colouristic sonorities floating under the melody on the uilleann pipes. This merged into a more lively jig-like section that layered a number of melodic patterns over each other to produce a densely polyphonic texture.

David Fennessy’s The Blue-Eyed Lassie was based on the traditional air of the same name. For much of this piece, the outline of the main melody played on cello remained intact but certain notes were altered, introducing momentary melodic quirks into the tune. The violin performed an accompanying role of arabesque harmonics in the high register while a percussive tapping rhythm emanated from the piano. A particularly poignant moment occurred when the tune switched from the cello to pianist Mary Dullea who gently hummed the melody against the increasingly unsettled background. The piece was by far the most exploratory of the works on the programme that engaged directly with Irish traditional music.

The second half of the concert featured a performances of Henry Cowell’s The Banshee by Dullea and Joan Trimble’s Phantasy Trio, but the real highlight was a version of the traditional air ‘Port na bPúcaí’. This began with Dullea using an ebow to sustain a piano harmonic as a drone for Morgan’s beautiful rendition of the tune. As good as this was, it was Vallely’s follow-up on the uilleann pipes that left the greatest impression, in particular his use of the drones and regulators to provide an accompaniment rich in deeply affecting harmonic clashes. Despite the inventiveness of the other works on the programme, nothing quite matched the elemental force of this performance in terms of direct emotional impact.

The concert finished with two pieces by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. The first, Fidelio Unsung, was written for the trio in 2012 and is based on a small number of ostinato patterns. The piece did seem to have something going for it on the level of dogged determination alone as it pursued the same two or three motives for practically its entire duration. This, however, soon wore thin and the one-dimensional nature of the piece exposed a lack of imagination in both the material and the overall structure.  

On the other hand, Ó Súilleabháin’s second piece, (must be more) Crispy!, was the polar opposite. Written in collaboration with Mel Mercier, this piece utilised similar fragments to the first piece – bits of semiquaver passagework and a catchy classical sounding motive on piano – but exhibited a much greater range of invention in both harmony and texture so that the piece’s groove and sense of fun became more infectious as it progressed. Indeed, it is rare that one encounters two pieces by the same composer performed back-to-back that are so unbalanced in terms of quality.

The Fidelio Trio and Cillian Vallely

Sunday afternoon
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the Saturday events but I did return for the Sunday afternoon concert which contained a more conventional programme of Fauré’s Piano Trio in D minor Op. 120, Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat D929, and a new work by Ailís Ní Ríain, Born unfixed to bend and break and leave behind, which was receiving its Irish premiere.

The Fidelio’s performance of Fauré’s trio contained many fine moments including the nicely balanced contrast between the contrapuntal and unison playing in the first movement. The second slow movement was particularly fine in this regard with the cantando theme beautifully played with vibrato between cello and violin in lockstep together over Dullea’s sensitive piano playing.

Ní Ríain’s piece was inspired by a poem entitled ‘Semper Vacare’ by the Belfast-born poet Padraic Fiacc and the title is a quotation from the poem’s opening lines. According to the composer, the piece is intended to evoke a landscape of ‘brittle plentifulness’ meditating on the ongoing depletion of the world’s natural resources in the face of modern mass consumerism. The piece began with a disorientating contrast between the dry, recurring sound of a call bell (operated by Dullea on the piano) and a more eerie texture of trills in the high register of the piano and glassy harmonics on the violin. In her explanation of the piece, Ní Ríain states that the novel use of the call bell is supposed to evoke the ‘business of art, or the business of creation’. The texture alternately thickened and thinned but remained fragmentary and dissonant, possibly lingering in this flux for a bit too long. The coda, however, delivered the piece’s most haunting moments when sounds, reminiscent of cries from the depths of the oceans, emerged from the inside of the piano and were starkly juxtaposed with vigorous strumming of the violin and cello.

Perhaps the most challenging piece on the programme was Schubert’s sprawling Piano Trio in E-flat major D929 which is a rather formally diffuse work requiring some long-range planning to carry off successfully. The Fidelio chose a perfect tempo for the first movement, wisely skipped the repeats, and focused on giving each thematic section great definition. In the final movement, Dullea’s effortless navigation of the challenging repeated notes and semiquaver passagework brought a sparkle to the end of the festival.

With the festival now in its twelfth edition, the Fidelio deserve enormous credit for continuing to deliver imaginative programmes that mix standard repertoire with new work. While there was only one world premiere in the festival – a piano trio by Richard Causton, If I Could Tell You, which featured in the Saturday evening concert – it is just as refreshing to see new work given repeat performances as well as interweaving previously commissioned pieces into new thematic threads. Also deserving of praise are GlasDrum, a voluntary organisation of arts professionals that put on a number of cultural events in the Glasnevin Drumcondra area and are integral to the planning and logistics of the festival. As with the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, having community organisations involved in the hosting of these festivals seems to be a winning formula in ensuring their longevity and the Fidelio Trio’s Winter Festival looks set to usher in the festive season for many years to come.

Visit www.fideliotrio.com and www.glasdrum.ie.

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