The Dublin-born clarinettist Carol McGonnell has a growing reputation as a solo performer and chamber musician in both the United States and Europe. Since 1998 she has been living in New York, where she performs with the chamber groups Proteus Five (Hunstein Artists), contemporary ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival and the Argento Ensemble. She has also performed with the New York Chamber Players, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Paragon, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the National Orchestral Institute of America, Les Musiciens de Louvre and Michael Tilson-Thomas' New World Symphony, Miami.

Before moving to New York, Carol McGonnell performed in Germany with a variety of groups, including Ensemble Modern, with whom she has recorded HK Gruber's Roaring Eisler on the RCA label. She has recently performed solo and in ensemble at the Pan Contemporary Music Festival (Seoul, Korea), Cape May Music Festival (New Jersey), Spoleto Festival (South Carolina), and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), Izmir Contemporary Festival (Turkey), Musical Observations (New York), as well as Merkin Concert Hall in New York.

In 2001 she performed at Bantry House with AXA Dublin International Piano Competition prize-winner Max Levinson and violinist Cora Venus Lunny. In New York in Spring 2002 she performed Boulez's Domaines for clarinet and orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky. Her involvement with new music has brought her into contact with leading composers. She recently performed Tashi by Lukas Foss at his 80th birthday celebration in New York City. Her ensemble, Argento, works closely with French composer Tristan Murail and gave the US première of his Winter Fragments in 2002 at the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York. At New York's Sounds French Festival, they gave the US premières of works by Phillipe Hurel and Gérard Pesson. She also performed at Carnegie Hall in a concert of works by Elliott Carter conducted by Oliver Knussen and given in the presence of the composer.

In 2003, at the invitation of Gerhard Markson, principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, she gave the Irish première of Boulez's Dialogue de l'Ombre Double for solo clarinet and tape, at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in the subscription series of the NSO.

Born in Dublin in 1958, Hugh Tinney first came to international recognition by winning first-prize in two international competitions, the 1983 Pozzoli in Italy and the 1984 Paloma O'Shea in Spain, and since then he has performed in more than 30 countries throughout Europe, the United States, South America and the Far East. His festival engagements have taken him to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Finland, France, Japan and the USA, and he has broadcast on radio or TV in more than 15 countries.

In 1987, he was a prize-winner in the Leeds Piano Competition. Two years later he made his debut at the Proms playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, and since then he has had a busy career in the UK, performing with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Royal Scottish Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. Conductors he has worked with include Simon Rattle, Norman del Mar, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Libor Pesek, Jerzy Maksymiuk and Jacek Kaspryk. He has performed over sixty concertos.

Hugh Tinney's contribution to Irish concert life in the 1990's has been significant. Highlights include his 1991 "Chopin Plus" recital series at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, later repeated in Cork; a second major recital series at the IMMA in 1995, focusing on the late sonatas of Schubert; and in 1998, he completed a three-year project to perform the complete Mozart piano concertos at Dublin's National Concert Hall with the Orchestra of St Cecilia. A complete cycle of the Beethoven concertos followed in 1999. All of these series received the highest plaudits from Irish critics and audiences. More recently, he gave the first three instalments of the cycle of 32 Beethoven sonatas at the Royal Dublin Society in 2000, 2001 and 2002; in a separate project, he performed the full Beethoven sonata cycle jointly with Philippe Cassard and Joanna MacGregor at Bantry House in April 2004. In January 2003, he gave a sell-out recital in Dublin's National Concert Hall as part of the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Series.

He has been a regular soloist for more than twenty years with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, touring with them in the UK in 1993 and performing with them at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1998. He played every year from 1997 to 2000 and again in 2003 at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry, and partners there or elsewhere have included Stephen Isserlis, Richard Watkins, the Borodin Quartet, the Vogler Quartet (at the Vogler Spring Festival in Sligo in 2000) and the Vanbrugh Quartet with whom he has appeared frequently over the past decade. His interest in contemporary Irish music has led to new works commissioned from Raymond Deane and Ian Wilson; Wilson's "Limena" was premiered in 1999 in an 8-concert tour of Ireland with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Hugh Tinney's discography includes a Liszt recital for Decca, Liszt's Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on Meridian, the Mendelssohn Concertos for 2 pianos on the Naxos label, the Aloys Fleischmann Piano Quintet and a collection of Irish songs with Bernadette Greevy, both of these on Marco Polo. Raymond Deane's After-Pieces for solo piano are included on a CD of Deane's works on Black Box. He recently recorded a CD of the piano solo and (with Catherine Leonard) violin/piano duo music of Ian Wilson which was released by Riverrun in 2004.

In 2000, Hugh Tinney became Artistic Director of the Music Festival in Great Irish Houses. He teaches at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and he has been a jury member at several international piano competitions, including Santander and Dublin. In 2004, he took part as principal pianist in the Sean O'Mordha documentary for RTÉ television "PIANO - The King of Instruments".

Sample Programmes

To be performed by Hugh Tinney:

Mozart Sonata in A minor, K310
Allegro maestoso
Andante cantabile con espressione
Presto

Details of the two duos in the programme are as follows:-

Brahms Sonata in E flat, Op 120 no 2
Allegro amabile
Appassionato, ma non troppo allegro
Andante con moto

Weber Grand duo concertant, J204 (op 48)
Allegro con fuoco
Andante con moto
Rondo - allegro

To be performed by Carol McGonnell:

Michel Galante Flicker

Franco Donatoni Clair

Reviews

More Info

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