Yesterday evening brought a remarkable concert by the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra, featuring soloist Dr Cathal Breslin in Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16. Breslin is Associate Professor of Piano at ASU and joint Artistic Director of the Walled City Music Festival in Derry, Northern Ireland, alongside his wife, the flautist Dr Sabrina Hu. I was delighted to be invited by Cathal, who comes from a great tradition of Northern Irish pianists that includes Barry Douglas, Ruth McGinley, Michael McHale and David Quigley, among others.
We first met at one of his earliest Walled City Music Festivals in 2011, when, as a recent graduate of Queen's University Belfast, I played Brahms's Fantasies, Op. 116, in a masterclass with him. Two pianists from Northern Ireland who both continued their studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and who now both live and work in Phoenix: that serendipity was too much to pass over, and I welcomed the chance to hear Breslin perform and to support his work.
The concert opened with Grażyna Bacewicz's Overture (1943). It was exciting to see the faces of this youthful orchestra, and the rhythmic moments were full of energy. Under conductor Alejandro Gómez Guillén, the passagework was as tidy as it was thrilling.
Breslin began the concerto's Andantino atmospherically, with poise, patience and poetry. The dark turns of the melody were wraithlike and played with macabre elegance. The cadenza was a highlight: the tone was powerful and full yet never forced. He met the relentless demands of the leaps, passagework, and chordal clusters with seemingly indefatigable rigour, playing of a calibre that took me back to Barry Douglas's concerts at Belfast's Waterfront Hall in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The Scherzo was equally charged. The fluidity and ease with which Breslin played the opening figuration gave the audience confidence in the work's elusive narrative for the rest of the performance.
In the Intermezzo, it seemed as though Breslin's hands were made for this piece. The hand crossing was supple, gripping, and suitably fierce. There was little discernible difference between the glissandi and the scalic passages, and the performance was a masterclass in the free use of arm weight and the release of tension. His stamina and memory were also noteworthy. On a personal level, it was inspiring to watch a fellow countryman play with such brilliance.
"It seemed as though Breslin's hands were made for this piece."
The architecture of the whole performance became apparent in the Finale. The chordal passages were beautifully voiced, and there was never a moment that could be called overdone, glib, or kitsch. The intensity of the first movement returned, and the tone kept an integrity that is difficult to define. The waves of sound, culminating in rapid hand movement, were enthralling to watch and to listen to, and characteristic of the performance.
The concerto closed the first half, and the interval turned into a fascinating meeting of the Irish diaspora in Phoenix. It was encouraging to hear the various paths people from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the UK have taken in this city over the years, and I appreciated Cathal's down-to-earth, pragmatic, and humorous perspective in our conversations. I left with a sense that musicians in Phoenix can draw on a deep well of high-level artistry, pedagogy, and entrepreneurship – paving the way to a bright future.
