Reviews

The Cranberries turn in a polished performance at the Point according to Peter Crawley, while Michael Dervan was delighted with Cels Antunes's stylishly-delivered progamme in the National Gallery, and Martin Adams was impressed with the effort to tame Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the NCH.

The Cranberries, The Point.

Dolores O'Riordan dances as though no one is looking. Ebullient, unselfconscious and endearingly eccentric, she strikes mini-Elvis poses and struts buoyantly across the expanse of The Point's stage. Each shake of her hips sends her bounteously-fringed red trousers into a whirl of excitement.

Of course, there are actually quite a lot of people keeping an eye on Dolores, whose band is currently celebrating a decade's work. If The Cranberries' album titles trace an immodest development from the unassuming début Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? to current greatest hits proclamation, Stars, their journey has hit a few potholes.

Tonight, though, is a smooth ride. Limerick's unlikely megastars hurtle through a set that stomps through Analyse, casts off the politically hollow but fantastically grungy Zombie shockingly soon and a too-brisk rendition of Linger also arrives surprisingly early in the set.

Criticised for asinine lyrics, O'Riordan's true strength still remains her voice. Here, delivery far surpasses content. The doo-wop tinged opening of a mellifluous When You're Gone drifts sweetly by Noel Hogan's chiming guitar into a swirly chorus with pummelled punctuation.

It might seem formulaic - "didn't they do this one already?" someone asks - but when The Cranberries' hits merge the lullaby lilt of their ballads with the sturm und drang of their hard rock desires, it is reflected in the approval of nodding couples and kids in Nirvana t-shirts.

Internationally huge, The Cranberries have had to battle for domestic favour. Tonight is a triumph for the overdogs. -  Peter Crawley

NCC/Celso Antunes, National Gallery

Supremum est mortalibus ......................................................... Dufay

Da pacem, Domine .................................................................. Lassus

Da pacem, Domine .................................................. Melchior Franck

Verleih uns Frieden, gnädiglich .............................................. Schütz

Dona nobis pacem ...................................................................... Bach

Friede auf Erden .............................................................. Schoenberg

Agnus Dei ..................................................................... Frank Martin

Agnus Dei ........................................................ Krzysztof Penderecki

Supremum est mortalibus ........................................ Stephen Gardner

This concert brought another of Celso Antunes's intelligently thought-out, stylishly-delivered programmes with the National Chamber Choir at the National Gallery.

In a programme themed on peace and featuring music from the 15th century to the present, he began with the chordal resonances, rhythmic patterning and cadential formulas of Guillaume Dufay's Supremum est mortalibus. The piece rises to a forceful splendour intended to bend the ear of two powerful men of church and state in the interests of peace.

Stephen Gardner, setting the same text in a specially commissioned work, showed no such optimism or confidence. The music's progress is confounded by rising pitch and dissonance, and shortly after it winds its way out of a calm attained with difficulty, it breaks off, unable to confront the notion of peace "without end", let alone celebrate peacemakers, or reach an Amen.

Antunes and his singers handled the demands of Gardner's sometimes knotty writing with the same sort of clear vision they brought to the masterly chromaticism of Schoenberg's complex and extremely touching Friede auf Erden.

It's not often that foreground and background in this landmark piece are treated with such skill, or with an insight that allows the music's backward-looking romanticism and its forward-looking instability to co-exist with such ease.

The stylistic changes from Dufay up to Bach, in both music and performance, were fascinating to observe and the Agnus Dei settings by Martin and Penderecki, from either end of the 20th century, provided a predictably striking contrast. - Michael Dervan

NSO, RTÉ Philharmonic Choir/Missa Solmnis, National Concert Hall

By the time Beethoven completed the Missa Solemnis in 1823, many people thought the 53-year-old composer's total deafness had befuddled his judgment. If any composition seems designed to confirm that verdict, this is it. To choral music the Missa Solemnis is what Beethoven's Grosse fuge is to chamber music - a procession of perpetual extremities. It stretches to their limits idea, design, harmony and counterpoint; and is perhaps the most demanding choral work in the mainstream repertoire. Singers who have wrestled seriously with it never forget its demands on stamina, range and dynamic variation.

At the National Concert Hall, the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gerhard Markson wrestled and prevailed. The performance rarely lost that intense, precise expression which is this work's primary strength - and the hardest aspect to grip, let alone sustain.

The soloists presented many fine moments, especially in the Benedictus, which also featured some fine solo playing from strings and wind. However, despite the considerable individual strengths of soprano Cara O'Sullivan (replacing the originally advertised Franzita Whelan), mezzo Ann Murray, tenor Alan Woodrow and bass Philip O'Reilly, they did not gel as a group - and not only because of Woodrow's tendency to over-project.

Ultimately, the performance depended on Gerhard Markson's clarity of vision in notoriously intractable music. Strong phrasing, precise dynamics, proportional tempos between sections, and razor-sharp rhythm were among the strong points of a gripping performance. - Martin Adams