Frank Corcoran

Them mid-seventies for me weren´t, ahem, the easiest years of my sweet youth ( – but which , were, then, eh ? ) . Yes,I´d done good, I had dug a solid composer´s work with the choral MEDIEVAL IRISH EPIGRAMMES, with the HERR JESU CHRIST Choral Cantata ( German-Baroque texts by Paul Fleming ); both went later to the Paris International Composers´Rostrum. The THREE ORCHRESTRAL PICTURES ( ” Pictures From MY Exhibition” ) were strongly conceived, strongly orchestrated. High-born. Yet I struggled – eg. how to solve – for me- a convincing rhythmic line ? Two floating instrumental lines ? All three grand soloists´ fazy-hazy lines , as eg. in that early Irish and Dublin PIANO TRIO which the 2013 Zagreb Biennale honoured. Oh! those searing, magical young Zagreb string players , their Croatian electricity ( it was searing / amputating, too, the Croatian State´s war – brothers´, all cousins´, their very spouses´, is a mere twenty years finished… ).
My opening page for low piano solo is the most difficult that I´ve ever had to imagine. It must break balls, it breaks fingers, play rhythmic symmetries at all costs. The cello´s entry is grandiose. Ditto its floating ( Bergian ? ) solo violin line, their lines, transposing and transporting, defying gravity ( yet not ” gravitas” ) . My Piano Trio´s composer´s argument is only beginning; a musical ” argument “, strife, a struggle, who´ll win ( with that Brahms reminiscence ? ), I wonder ? Tones will. A last tone. A young man´s extraordinary break-through.
This 2013 Zagreb Biennale ZAGREB PIANO TRIO Concert broke new ground electric.