Reviews

Poulenc recital with violinist Paul Fanning
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

The Six pieces for solo piano which Rachel Quinn played at Sunday’s noon recital in the Hugh Lane Gallery, written between 1918 and 1928, have the geniality and relaxation of music designed for private performance, or for the delectation of a few friends. The performance gave all the pleasure it should, the character of the pieces being light, not solemn. In Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1943) both artists performed with the necessary force, making the instruments speak the rhetoric of grief.

Douglas Sealy, The Irish Times


Piano Recital by Rachel Quinn

She is at her best when she is introspective, giving her excellent fingering a magical, mesmeric quality. At many points in her recital I was strongly reminded of ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’, and that kind of playing, of which Charles Lynch was the master, characterizes Rachel Quinn.

Richard Pine, Irish Times


British Embassy, Oslo.
Carnaval Op. 9—Schumann, Sonata in C Hob XVI:20—Haydn

Three or four bars of Haydn’s piano sonata were enough to convince me that hereafter I could look forward to minutes of sheer pleasure . . . an artistically serious woman . . . great craftsmanship here.

Bibi Riefling, Oslo International Forum


Romantic Works of Liszt and Rachmaninoff 

A programme of Romantic music performed to an impeccably high standard and with charisma at the National Concert Hall. Rachel Quinn played beautifully in the Rachmaninoff Sonata and showed considerable stamina in a notoriously virtuoso piano part. Annette Cleary demonstrated an extraordinary level of ease in her cello playing, unyielding tone and warm vibrato.

Matt Rafter, Golden Plec, 2012

            From an Irish Point of View
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3

From an Irish point of view there are John O’Conor, Barry Douglas, Philip Martin
and there’s Rachel Quinn – whose progress I imagine, will be closely watched.

Extract from ‘‘A Morale Boost at the NCH’’,
Gus Smith, Sunday Independent


Irish House of Lords Recital
Sonata No.2—Chopin, Sonata No.4—Prokofiev

Tuesday night’s performer was the pianist Rachel Quinn, who although in her early twenties and still a student at the Royal College of Music in London won the distinction of being heard as a soloist in one of the NSO’s subscription concerts . . . she sees herself as a performer in the grand manner . . . a performer who gets around the keyboard with such obvious ease and relish.

Michael Dervan, Irish Times


National Symphony Orchestra Lunchtime Concert
Symphonic Variations—Cesar Franck

Last week’s lunchtime concert in the National Concert Hall was noisy and colorful—but not lacking in moments of sensitivity as Rachel Quinn, piano, gave a sustained and thoughtful account of the solo part in Franck’s Symphonic Variations.

Douglas Sealy, Irish Times


Holland Music Series

No fewer than four musicians performed in the well illuminated and crowded Ruinekirke. Rachel Quinn from Ireland finished this concert in a brilliant way with the Rigoletto Paraphrase by Franz Liszt.

Hins Express, Holland Music Series, Bergen, Holland


Full House at Recital for Goal
Sonata Op. 57 (Appassionata)—Beethoven

Rachel got a full house for her recital in aid of Goal/Somalia. Her playing had a fine assurance and a good singing tone. She had the strength to do the Beethoven full justice with its wild mood swings.

John Brophy, Irish Press


Aer Lingus Young Artists at the National Concert Hall

Rachel Quinn presented two highly virtuosic pieces, Rachmaninov’s quietly florid G sharp minor prelude and Liszt’s ‘‘Tarantella’’ from the ‘‘Années de Pelerinage’’, the latter in a turbulently energetic performance.

Martin Adams, Irish Times


Lunchtime Concert at the National Concert Hall

The piano concerto in C sharp minor by Rimsky-Korsakov produced the most satisfactory music of the concert. Rachel Quinn’s technically assured performance was matched by a sensitive orchestral response which produced a good partnership.

Philip Hollaway, Irish Times


Si concludera oggi l’incontro Pianisti

L’irlandese Rachel Quinn, che ha prova di grande espressivita soprattutto nell’interpretazione
del difficile Etude-Tableau Op. 39 No. 5 de Rachmaninoff

Elio Mencarini, Corriere Adriatico Pesaro, Italy


Violin and Piano Recital with Paul Fanning
Strauss and Respighi Sonoatas for Violin and Piano.

The players made a considerable imaginative leap in order to become one with the extraordinary opulence of sound. They succeeded in making the exoticism seem as natural as a jungle growth in which brilliant and extraordinary flowers breathe a miasma of decay . . . virtuosity of players put to the service of the music, it was a clearing in the jungle.

Douglas Sealy, Irish Times


Purcell Room, Debut Recital, Southbank Centre London, October 2000

In James MacMillan’s Kiss on Wood, however, the pair really let loose. Wild and clouded chordal drifts from the piano are overlaid by lush and plaintive violin melodies. Harrington and Quinn described its winding contours with aching tenderness, a profound sense of melancholy touching every phrase. With Brahms’s Sonata in D minor op. 108 . . . both revelling in its rich sonorities in capturing its underlying tensions with great aplomb.”

Catherine Nelson, The Strad


Piano Recital at the National Concert Hall
Sonata in A minor D784—Schubert, Ballade No. 1—Chopin.

The Schubert Sonada’s last movement had sequences of brittle energy and lyricism
bound together by ‘moto perpetuo’ rhythm and had the cohesion one hopes to hear.

‘‘Alborado del Grazioso’’ and La Vallee des Cloches’’ [from Ravel’s Miroirs] had the rewards.
The former for fiery energy and the latter for beautiful contrasts of tone.

Martin Adams, The Irish Times


NCH John Field Room, Dublin

Beethoven Trio in E-flat Op. 38. Rota-Trio Clarinettist Paul Roe, cellist Annette Cleary and pianist Rachel Quinn made up the unusual chamber music threesome called for by Beethoven’s arrangement of his own septet Op. 20. A calm presence at the keyboard, Quinn made light work of these showy episodes, and left just the right sounding-room for her collaborators. Cleary was a dynamo of generous expression and sprightly accentuation, whole Roe capped the ensemble with suave and wistful melody-making. As you’d expect (Rota’s trio) is a polished and sophisticated little piece. Though the gallop-like finale bears a more than superficial resemblance to Ibert’s Divertissement, it made for a fitting conclusion to a concert of chamber music at its most approachable and entertaining.

Andrew Johnstone, The Irish Times

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