Piano Recital By Michael McHale

Piano recital by Michael McHale.

Review By George Fleeton

PIANIST Michael McHale ended a short recital tour in the Arts Centre in Downpatrick on April 25, and over one hundred enthusiasts poured into the Arts Centre on a damp afternoon to appreciate some sublime music making.

It had been exactly a year since we last enjoyed a solo recital of this quality, and that was Ivan Ilic, whose programme then consisted of Brahms, Chopin and Debussy.

Both pianists delivered the kind of liquid architecture or translucent sculpture you would pay big bucks to hear in the world’s major concert halls.

Maestro McHale’s selection was taken from Mozart, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, to which he had added Johannes Brahms - indeed the same four Opus 10 Ballades that Ilic had played for us last year! – music that was lean but richly textured.

Recitals such as these tend to remind us that music is the most abstract of all art forms.

It has its own organic chemistry and kinetic energy.

The mind pictures it conjures up are our own, which enable us to get in touch with our imaginative souls without worrying about the subject matter of a musical phrase, or the significance of changes in key, tempo or chord.

Two short pieces by local composer Ian Wilson more than filled out McHale’s programme, the second of which, Sonnenwende, with its robust middle section, had been written especially for this pianist.

To say that the Rachmaninoff Études-tableaux were the highlight of this recital may need an argument, in the company of Mozart, Liszt and Brahms.

That’s easy: as a pianist the Russian was superior to all three, as a composer he had the benefits of their legacies, and that of Tchaikovsky.

All of these factors informed Rachmaninoff’s unique skills, and the passion and power of his compositions were built on innate romanticism and the demand for melancholy in music which was the European rage at that time.

This he served up in these Études-tableaux, in his 2nd Piano Concerto, and later in the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini – all iconic piano music from the early part of the last century.

He fled the 1917 Revolution and his interest in composition diminished substantially during his careers as concert pianist, guest conductor and recording artist throughout Europe and America, where he died in 1943. He was the last of the greatest.

Michael McHale concluded his recital with an amusingly decorated Londonderry Air, and took a standing ovation for his prodigious playing from an attentive and partisan audience.