Review: Tom Mooney

One of the recurring themes of the annual Music for Wexford programmes is the excellent exposition of a hitherto relatively obscure composer in our neck of the woods.

What little is known of Louis Gottschalk, a Byronic-type cad with an eye for the wimmin, was bestowed on a rapt audience at St. Iberius Church on Friday by the foremost exponent of his music, Irish pianist Philip Martin, who rounded off a memorable concert with Solitude and Le Banjo.

Gottschalk, from New Orleans and of Creole descent, led a life of Raphael-likeexcess in mid-nineteenth century America and departed this world when he was 39, but not before he left behind a considerable body of work, much of which has been recorded in an eight volume set of CDs for Hyperion, by Martin.

Friday’s programme was a mixed bag of the known and the unknown, bookended by Beethoven and an encore of Robots by Billy Mayerl, a composer whose name had many scratching their heads, or consulting their Blackberrys.

In between was a batch of composers – Mendelssohn, Gershwin and Chopin -who shared little in common, if you exclude their genius, except their number of years on the planet, 39.

Evenings like this inevitably have their surprises, and for the majority it was a choice between the pleasant Robots by Mayerl, who didn’t pop his cloggs before his you will be happy to know, and the Havana melody pair by Gottschalk, with strong premonitions of jazz and ragtime.

The highlight though was neither the effusive Fantasis on the Last Rose of Summer, written by local boy and Byron biographer, Tom Moore, or Chopin’s Three Waltzes, but Philip Martin himself, whose enthusiasm is infectious and endearing.

Martin is a musician, composer and teacher and it is these three elements which dovetail into a perfomer par excellence. The next Music for wexford concerts are on May 10th and June 1st.