Pursued by a Bear

• Peter Mathiessen wins National Book Award

  November 20, 2008 @ 7:41 am | by Fiona

  Eighty-one-year-old author and environmental activist Peter Mathiessen has won the National Book Award for fiction for Shadow Country, a one-volume revision of a trilogy of novels that caused a little blogosphere controversy when it was first shortlisted. The argument was whether three novels revised as one could be considered a new book, but the judges stood firm, particularly given that Shadow Country is also 400 pages shorter than the combined novels and does contain new writing. Mathiessen, one of the founders of the Paris Review and a practising Zen monk, is also known for his non-fiction and travel writing. Shadow Country is an 890 page reworking of his own trilogy on the historical figure Edgar J. Watson.

  The other winners, announced at a ceremony in New York last night, were Annette Gordon-Reed in nonfiction, for The Hemingses of Monticello; Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire in poetry; and Judy Blundell in young people’s literature, for What I Saw and How I Lied.

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• Reviews: Iolanthe - NCH, Dublin

  November 19, 2008 @ 10:52 am | by Fiona

  In Dublin, and perhaps elsewhere, nobody produces the Gilbert and Sullivan canon as splendidly as the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society. A sweeping endorsement, of course, but the evidence is to hand in the version of Iolanthe now gracing the NCH stage. It is altogether delicious. (more…)

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• Reviews: Ensemble Scratch the Surface - Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

  @ 10:52 am | by Fiona

  Scratch the Surface is a contemporary music ensemble founded in 2006. The programming for its recent Music Network tour was based on the premise that the old boundaries which once designated sounds as either musical or non-musical no longer exist. (more…)

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• Reviews: Tony Christie - Vicar Street, Dublin

  November 18, 2008 @ 11:38 am | by Fiona

  He croons more credibly than most, his phrasing is impeccable and his occasional dance routines impinge minimally on his big band sound. Tony Christie is engaged in the kind of reincarnation that invigorated the flagging careers of everyone from Joe Dolan to Rod Stewart and Tom Jones. (more…)

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• Reviews: IBO/Huggett - St Ann’s Church, Dublin

  @ 11:37 am | by Fiona

  Taking an evening out from its annual festival at Ardee, the Irish Baroque Orchestra came to Dublin with a selection from its two festival concerts. Its programme, Baroque A-Z, yielded a musical lexicon encompassing composers from Albinoni to Zelenka, with Handel, Mondonville, Purcell and Vivaldi included along the way. (more…)

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• Reviews: Cooney, RTÉ NSO/ Altschuler - NCH, Dublin

  @ 11:37 am | by Fiona

  Smetana - Vltava. Dvorák - Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky - Symphony No 6.

  A packed house for this concert by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra attested to the enduring appeal of a mainstream programme. On offer were a tone-poem, a concerto and a symphony, all dating from the last three decades of the 19th century. (more…)

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• Reviews: Cashell, Johnston, OSC/Daniel - NCH, Dublin

  @ 11:36 am | by Fiona

  Mendelssohn - Hebrides Overture.

  Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 2.

  John Tavener - The Protecting Veil.

  Sophie Cashell, the young Irish pianist who won last year’s BBC2 Classical Star contest, joined the Orchestra of St Cecilia at the National Concert Hall for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in B flat (the second to be published, but the first to be written). She played with youthful brio and seemed particularly at home in the effervescence of the finale. (more…)

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• Reviews: A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

  @ 11:35 am | by Fiona

  Benjamin Britten wrote his Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Aldeburgh Festival of 1960. It was presented in the town’s Jubilee Hall, then newly rebuilt and extended. The hall’s capacity was - and still is - very small, accommodating an audience of just over 300. Britten took this into account by limiting the demands of staging and keeping the size of the orchestra to just 30. (more…)

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• Presidential tastes

  November 17, 2008 @ 6:23 pm | by Fiona

  According to his official facebook page, Barack Obama is a fan of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Steve Wonder, Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites and The Fugees.  His favourite movies are Casablanca, the first two Godfathers, Lawrence of Arabia and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, while Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick,  Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Bible and Lincoln’s Collected Writings are listed as his favourite books. So what, if anything, does all of this tell us about the US president-elect?

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• Reviews: Ó Lionáird, Crash Ensemble - Imma, Dublin

  @ 10:47 am | by Fiona

  Gavin Bryars — Anáil Dé.

  Sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird was the supporting act at the first appearance of the Gavin Bryars Ensemble in Ireland in 2004. That encounter sowed the seeds of Bryars’s new Anáil Dé (The Breath of God), settings of Irish spiritual texts for voice and an ensemble made up of two violas, cello, electric guitar and double bass. The new work was premiered at Imma on Friday by Ó Lionáird with members of the Crash Ensemble and the composer himself on double bass. (more…)

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