Reviews 2006 to 2009

2006
“Tinney captured the stormy, epic quality of [Mozart’s] Concerto No.24, projecting the piano line up and out of the middle of the orchestra where the piano was situated. His performance was balanced and mature”

Andrea Rea, Belfast Newsletter

“Hugh Tinney was the first to perform, offering a measured, finely-sculpted account of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. It was a performance that captured well the extraordinary magic of the opening movement...”

Michael Dervan, Irish Times

“Pianist Hugh Tinney and clarinettiest Carol McGonnell ...seemed to be in complete agreement about how the music should go. They brought poise and satisfaction to the sage musings of Brahms’s Sonata in D flat...and fearless dash to the hell-for-leather precipitations of Weber’s Grand Duo Concertant”

Andrew Johnstone, Irish Times

2007
“Hugh Tinney’s playing of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C, K467 (the one now tagged Elvira Madigan from its use in Bo Widerberg’s 1967 film of that name) explored a whole range of freedoms and surprising, imaginative gestures that the orchestral playing seemed set on avoiding. Yet the two different approaches co-existed happily in a performance that managed to be engaging at the moment of delivery”

Michael Dervan, Irish Times

[Mendelssohn’s G minor Piano Concerto] “Soloist Hugh Tinney was always equal to the fire of the first movement and the mischievous, busy virtuosity of the finale. But the greater substance of the gentle second movement was the highlight, with Tinney and [Gerhard] Markson working in close, chamber music-style partnership”

Michael Dungan, Irish Times

2008
[with the Ulster Orchestra in Dublin] “It was a fascinating idea to offer a contrast of soloists in Liszt’s two shortish piano concertos in a single concert. Hugh Tinney played the first with a dashing thoughtfulness and also engaged fully with the opportunities for chamber music-making that Liszt opened up through a range of orchestral solos”

Michael Dervan, Irish Times

[with RTE Concert Orchestra in Dublin] “The evening’s concerto – Mozart’s C minor K 491 ... finds soloist Hugh Tinney master of its dramatic import. There is restraint in the serenity of the central movement ...The finale’s variations return to the tragic bearing of the opening, and here Tinney conveys its intensity with powerful gravitas and [Benjamin] Wallfisch ensures the orchestra’s support is continuously vital”

Pat O’Kelly, Irish Independent

[with RTE National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin] “Balance featured in the orchestra’s partnership role with soloist Hugh Tinney in the last of Beethoven’s five piano concertos, The Emperor. Tinney’s bite in the first movement’s rampant scales and arpeggios ensured they attained their gripping and mysterious value beyond that of mere flourishes. There was no milking of the gracious slow movement, only the song, perfectly judged, followed by an explosion of energy, high spirits and wit in the finale.”

Michael Dungan, Irish Examiner

2009
[Music in Great Irish Houses festival] “...the florid arpeggiation in the last of [Tinney’s] selection [of Schubert Impromptus] in A flat, D899 No 4, was delivered with delectable delicacy. John Finucane and Tinney handled the second of Brahms’s late clarinet sonatas with easy give and take in a style inclined towards understatement.”

Michael Dervan, Irish Times

“The most recent pieces were the two piano quintets. Thomas Adès’s, from 2001, has a strong sense of a narrative haunted by the past, sometimes turning its material over with the locked-groove insistence of a disturbingly bad dream. It’s a strongly gripping work, and Hugh Tinney and the Callino Quartet captured both its linear independence and its specific evocations with real potency.
Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet of 1976 is a pained, impassioned work that was prompted by the death of the composer’s mother, a work which he managed to complete only after a four-year-long struggle. The Callinos made the most of the piece’s often microtonally-expressed wrenching anguish, with Tinney an unflinching partner, both in stridency and peace.
Tinney steered clear of the steeliness that a lot of players favour in Sofia Gubaidulina’s early Chaconne of 1962, tempering the angularity and harshness of the writing in a way that made the piece sound more traditionally anchored than usual.”

Michael Dervan, Irish Times