Reviews

Irish Times writers review Redmond O'Toole at the NCH, Romeo and Juliet at the Cork Opera House and Oisin MacDiarmada, Sean McElwaine and Brian Fitzgerald at the Half Moon Club, Cork.

Redmond O'Toole at the NCH, Dublin

The distinctive Irish classical guitarist Redmond O'Toole is currently on a two-week tour of Ireland to mark the launch of his debut CD, Movements.

His NCH programme sampled and expanded on the CD's tracklist.

O'Toole has been among the first to espouse the so-called Brahms guitar, which was invented in 1994 by Scottish guitarist Paul Galbraith to handle a transcription of Brahms's piano variations Op 21 No 1.

It's an eight-stringed instrument that connects through a cello-style spike to a ground-level resonating box. Since it has a vertical rather than a horizontal playing position, O'Toole has had to transform his technique just as radically as a violinist wanting to play the cello would have to.

The benefits are enhanced sonority and an expanded range (the two extra strings usually being tuned respectively a fourth lower and a fourth higher than the others).

How much the vertical position gives the hands additional freedom wasn't entirely clear from O'Toole's live playing.

Certainly, he brought a layered and coherent feel to two Bach preludes - one from the first cello suite (which suggested two voices in dialogue over a pizzicato bass), the other from the E minor lute suite (which suggested four voices or more).

In two movements from Haydn's Sonata No 35, however, an easy keyboard texture seemed to have become something far less tractable for guitar.

There was some blurring of the passage work, too, in Albeniz's Asturias and the finale of Antonio José's Sonata para Guitarra.

Yet these and other Hispanic works - Mompou's Canción and Torroba's Serenata Burlesca - were full of colour and variegation.

And in company with violinist Elizabeth Cooney (who also plays on the CD), the adagio theme from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez made for the evening's most atmospheric moment of all.

Tours to Castlebar (Oct 5), Bray (Oct 7), Wexford (Oct 8), Galway (Oct 10), Tallaght (Oct 11), Sligo (Oct 12), Navan (Oct 13) and Dundrum (Oct 14). See www.redmondotoole.com Andrew Johnstone

Romeo and Juliet at the Cork Opera House

For one breath-taking moment in this Ellen Kent and Ballet International presentation of Romeo and Juliet, it looks as if the story is to have a happy ending. It seems that Prokofiev preferred to have his dancers alive rather than dead and although eventually persuaded to go with the original plot, either he, or choreographer Evgeny Girnets, compensated by introducing some near-death duets and solos along with a few extremely acrobatic death-throes.

Ghenadi Badika offers Tybalt as a kind of Veronese Wayne Rooney with Evgheny Tkach's Mercutio as Cristiano Ronaldo, both dancing with a skill infused with character and conviction and dying in long athletic spasms. It's only when Friar Lawrence, prettier even than Juliet, falls once too often to the ground in despair that things become too close to the ridiculous, a danger from which only the dancing and personality of Maria Poliudva and Vladimir Statnii as the tragic lovers can rescue the production.

Prokofiev's score is challenging, although a firm brass sound from the small orchestra maintains not only the pace but the ominous atmosphere.

While there is a lot of colour and movement on stage, there is a sense from this performance by the Russian Classical Ballet Theatre that the composer was better advised when, in politically unsympathetic times, he re-arranged the music as symphonic suites. Ends today; Coppelia opens tomorrow Mary Leland

Oisín MacDiarmada, Seán McElwaine, Brian Fitzgerald at the Half Moon Club, Cork

Music, unlike society at large, is an arena that positively embraces multiple identities. Oisín MacDiarmada might be a founding member of the powerhouse sextet, Téada, but his alter-ego came out to play in Cork, and how he revelled in the change of pace and scene.

MacDiarmada's graciousness and utter lack of ego are his hallmark, though his delightful swinging fiddle style isn't half bad either. Free to roam from the paddocks in which Téada usually graze, he relished the chance to renew old acquaintance with banjo player, Brian Fitzgerald (with whom he recorded a fine CD back in 2001). His safety net was there too, in the person of his regular Téada compadre, guitarist Seán McElwaine.

After a slow start on the reel set that featured a borrowing from Paddy Canny and The Humours Of Castlefinn, fiddle and banjo traced intricate dance patterns, wooing the best out of each other's playing, and delighting in their shared exploration of the minor chords of this reel set.

The trio admitted the need to "hold back" in advance of their performance later that night at the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Awards ceremony, but the reins were loosened to a tension perfectly matched to meet the demands of a jig set featuring Tom Billy's and The Leg Of The Duck.

McElwaine and MacDiarmada are a Hayes and Cahill, mark two. McElwaine's guitar chords are carefully chosen to mirror and sigh alongside MacDiarmada's free-flowing fiddle lines, the pair glorying in the deconstruction of tunes which might otherwise seem jaded.

A perfect entrée to a long night of music: truly a pure drop. Siobhán Long