Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review Mozart and Jeff Tweedy

Camerata Ireland/Douglas

NCH, Dublin

Mozart - Piano Concertos in A K414. in B flat K595. in C K503

How do you like your Mozart? Aggressively energised on period instruments as offered by the Irish Baroque Orchestra directed by Monica Huggett? Powerfully cogent on modern instruments as played by the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Douglas Boyd? Unusual in balance and adventurous in physical layout, with the conductor placed as one among equals in the middle of the band, as Kenneth Montgomery has favoured with both the Ulster Orchestra and the Orchestra of St Cecilia? Or plainer and straighter, as is the general wont of the RTÉ NSO?

And where on the spectrum would you expect Barry Douglas's Camerata Ireland to fit? Well, at the NCH, at the end of an international tour, Camerata Ireland showed themselves to be mostly oriented towards the NSO end of the scale, but with a lot more polish and more concern for light and shade.

Douglas directed three Mozart concertos from the keyboard, with the piano placed in position at the front. It's the solution for soloist-directed performances which offers the most focused piano tone, and Douglas and his players showed no serious problems of ensemble due to the sightline issues that can arise from the lid being fully up.

There is no other Irish pianist who can match Douglas in terms of technical resource or sharpness of musical response. But Mozart does not usually seem to be his home territory. He tends somehow makes one aware of his spare capacity, of the pianistic and musical potential that Mozart doesn't require him to use. At the same time there are always nice touches of the unexpected - affecting lowerings of the voice in unusual places, perhaps, or rapid runs brought off with special clarity and accuracy. But the feeling of containment, of a performer working to keep on his best manners, tends to limit the rewards.

This was the style of playing Douglas presented in the first two concertos of this programme, musicianly and responsible, and tending to sound a little bland. After the interval, however, once he launched into the more brilliant-sounding Concerto in C, K503, it was a different story.

The performance was delayed by the presentation by President Mary McAleese of the 2006 Accenture/ Camerata Young Musician of the Year award to Craigavon flautist, Eimear McGeown, who then gave a deft performance of Fauré's Fantaisie.

Once into the final concerto, the brilliance of Mozart's piano writing and his use of a larger orchestra seemed to encourage Douglas into a new freedom of delivery. There were virtuoso touches in abundance - exuberance in passage-work that travelled the length of the keyboard, filigree revealed with exemplary ease, and melodic arches in the slow movement that were sensitively filled in from Mozart's plain outlines. And the orchestra responded with an impressively higher level of vitality, too. Michael Dervan

Jeff Tweedy

Vicar Street, Dublin

In three years' time, when the best-of-decade list industry goes into overdrive, expect Wilco's 2002 masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to feature prominently. Not only is it a serious musical achievement, but the band's persistence in releasing the album after their record label refused to do so made its success a pop-cultural cause célèbre - and lead singer Jeff Tweedy into an indie music hero.

This tour sees the hero perform without his band, and a more minimalist musical presentation is hard to imagine. A black-clad Tweedy stands alone, except for four acoustic guitars arrayed in a Stonehenge-like semi-circle behind him. They seem almost to take the place of a backing band, reducing his sense of isolation. Tweedy has a somewhat difficult reputation, a reluctant star who has been in rehab, and who was recently involved in an onstage skirmish with an overzealous fan. But he will probably be one of the funniest performers to take to this stage this year, and that includes most of the comedians. "They told me this place was intimate," he deadpans at one point, looking out at the large, packed venue.

Intimacy is required for a performance like this. Hearing the songs of Wilco and his previous band Uncle Tupelo in such a stripped-down fashion is something like seeing photos of your adult friends as children - you know the material in its fully developed form, with dense production and rich musicianship, so this feels like a snapshot of the songs on their way to growing up. It is a testament to Tweedy's charisma that he and his guitar can compensate for the lack of his full band. He finishes with an entirely acoustic Uncle Tupelo number: he steps away from the mic and unplugs his guitar. The audience fall silent, straining to hear every plucked string, before bursting into rapturous, deserved, applause. Davin O'Dwyer