A great opening to the Waterford Chamber Music Festival
The Waterford Chamber Music Festival is largely the brainchild of dazzling young pianist Billy O’Brien
The sun shone on Mount Congreve, the gardens exploded with colour and God was in his Heaven for the second annual Waterford Chamber Music Festival. The musicians gathered, the crowds arrived and the Japanese Drawing Room was a musical hub of top class ensemble playing from some of the best musicians in the country. Works were commissioned – two from local composers Greg Scanlon and Marion Ingoldsby and a gem from the quill of young Milo McCarthy from the banks of the Lee.
Mayor Seamus Ryan, who has spent a lifetime supporting the arts in Waterford, opened the festival and drew on his family connections who worked at the estate. One degree of separation. Seamus nailed the essence of this festival referring to excellence, diversity, community, location and the fostering of the next generation of musicians.
The Waterford Chamber Music Festival is largely the brainchild of dazzling young pianist Billy O’Brien from Butlerstown who is the Artistic Director of the Waterford Chamber Music Festival. Billy is a significant performer on the Irish classical music scene and has performed as a concerto soloist with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Hibernian Orchestra, UCD Symphony Orchestra, RIAM Symphony Orchestra, Wexford Sinfonia and Trinity Orchestra in concertos by Chopin, Ravel, Grieg, Gershwin and Beethoven. He has given solo recitals in the Field Room, National Concert Hall, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery and has also performed in Spain, France, Finland and the UK.
He has appeared in concert series and festivals such as the New Ross Piano Festival, New Music Dublin, Music for Wexford. Billy, who has also won a number of prestigious international piano competitions, also enjoys teaching and recently completed his Ph. D in Music Performance at Trinity College in Dublin. He now lectures in the Cork School of Music, TU Dublin Conservatoire and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. are a key force in driving the Billy’s passion for chamber music and his links with young up and coming players are the driving forces behind the new Waterford Chamber Music Festival that kicked off at Mount Congreve on a glorious Fri night. Bach’s cello suite No 5 is quite the opening. Bach could make a cello sound like an organ. Parts just keeps entering with earlier parts that previously entered moving seamlessly along unnoticed. This caravan of parts and the conversations they set up inspire cellist Anastasia Feruleva and is the perfect opening for the Festival.
The Beethoven String Trio with Waterford violinist Siobhán Doyle, violist Luba Tunnicliffe and cellist Anastasia Feruleva opens boldly before segueing into a tender Adagio and then explodes into a massive finale.
Carrick-on-Suir composer Marian Ingoldsby premieres a new work in ‘Parlour Pieces’ performed by pianist Billy O’Brien, violinist Jennifer Murphy and cellist Anastasia Feruleva. Marian comments that she wished to ‘capture some of the wonders, the diversity of sounds and layers in nature while walking in the beautiful Mount Congreve Gardens’. And they’re all there. Falling and flowing water, shifting breezes, changing colours,summer sunlight and brilliant birdsong in one joyous unity of sound and texture in Marion’s ‘Parlour Pieces’.
Quintets are not that common any longer so when American composer Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet – performed by Billy O’Brien on piano, Jennifer Murphy and Siobhán Doyle on violins with Luba Tunnicliffe on viola and Anastasia Feruleva on cello – racked up, I was delighted. The piece is a significant work in American chamber music and explores a range of emotions. The quintet was composed around the time of Beach's husband's death in 1908 which probably goes a long way to explaining its emotional depth from melancholy and nostalgia to its dramatic intensity.
A great opening to the Waterford Chamber Music Festival.
