Reviews

Opera in County Down, light classical in Belfast, a Barry Douglas recital in Dublin and London's most celebrated practitioner of garage make it in to today's mix.

Castleward Opera

Castleward House, Strangford, Co Down

Bizet - Carmen

The opening night of Castleward Opera's new Carmen, a co-production with Opera 2005 that will be seen in Cork early next month, simply refused to catch fire.

Conductor Brian MacKay did his bit by whipping the orchestra up into a frenzy from time to time. But in spite of the bluster, both the excitement and allure of Bizet's music eluded him.

The Carmen, Louise Innes, strutted and jutted and pouted her way through the evening's performance. But the air of petulance was too strong, and there were moments when she drifted into a caricature that brought the cavortings of a pantomime dame to mind.

She certainly has the voice to handle the part in a small venue like Castleward, but she didn't show any real mastery of the manner, either from a musical or a theatrical perspective.

The Don José of Antoni Garfield Henry is a singer with some good, strong high notes, which he delighted in showing off, like a driver flooring it in a Ferrari without reference to either road quality or speed limits. He connected rather more successfully with the Micaëla of Mary Hegarty than with Carmen herself. But then it's probably fair to say that anybody would have.

Hegarty was the evening's saving grace. She sang with dignity, control and feeling, and her acting communicated a deep understanding of her character and situation.

She actually expressed a greater sexual charge in her longing for Don José than anything that was shown between Carmen and her various conquests.

It's by no means unknown in productions of Carmen for the Micaëla to outshine the Carmen. It's altogether rarer, however, for the Escamillo to outperform the Don José. But that's what Roland Wood managed on this occasion, even if the overall effect he created was a lot less dashing than the role demands.

The smaller roles were taken with the variability that is the norm at Castleward, and the women of the chorus sang with altogether greater consistency than the men.

Designer David Craig, who updated the production to the mid-20th century, is hardly their favourite person - the slips they are lumbered with as the Act I cigarette factory girls are about as unbecoming as you could imagine.

Chris Cowell's flat production failed to find much chemistry between the characters, and it was symptomatic of the evening as a whole that even the surtitles were garbled, to the point of having lines truncated mid-word.

The Castleward season continues until Saturday, June 25th

Michael Dervan

Barry Douglas (piano)

NCH, Dublin

Schumann - Phantasiestücke Op 111 Brahms - Fantasias Op 116 Schubert - Sonata in B flat D960

Breadth and depth of thought and practice were evident in this concert, given as part of the NCH/The Irish Times celebrity series. All the music came from the last years of the composers' lives, and although Schubert was only 31 when he died, the Sonata in B flat D960 has plenty to challenge performers more than twice that age.

Schumann's Phantasiestücke Op 111 are packed with the formal and technical innovations that make his late music so fascinating - the composer's original title was Cyclus für Pianoforte. Barry Douglas played this three-movement work with a nervous energy that suited its peculiarities and seemed aware of the mental struggles the composer was experiencing at that time, yet that had the maturity not to make cheap capital out of reading into the music things that are not evidently there.

That maturity was especially rewarding in the Brahms Fantasias Op 116. These elaborate character pieces had a range of colour that was almost orchestral in its breadth. Each movement and the spaces between them were impeccably paced and, especially in the slow pieces, the part-writing was beautifully layered. Even more than in the Schumann, the playing was purely musical in its consequences, yet seemed informed by an idea that was real without being obvious.

This recital touched on a primary aspiration of 19th-century music - that music could and should be a kind of elevated poetry, with meaning beyond what can be attained by words. In the Schubert in particular, Barry Douglas took a liberal view of some of the score's details. But his reading of this extraordinary music had a strength that made one regard this as an asset. The whole recital showed a realistic artistic ambition that was not only healthy - it was also lofty and profound.

Martin Adams

Ulster Orchestra - Charles Hazelwood

Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Bernstein - Fancy Free; Chichester Psalms; West Side Story (excerpts); On the Waterfront (suite)

Few composers have been promoted so insistently by a broadcasting company as Bernstein has in recent years by the BBC.

This was one of a series of Bernstein-related concerts broadcast every evening this week on Radio 3 to mark the 15th anniversary of his death. Bernstein is also This Week's Composer (a late-night slot, repeated at lunchtime on the following day), and his music has featured live or on records every day in afternoon programmes.

There's no denying the appeal of the excerpts from West Side Story, sung here by actor Julian Ovenden (amplified) and singer Sarah Fox (also amplified, but to a much lesser degree). But one wonders where Bernstein would stand as a composer if he hadn't written this piece. For all its noise, the On the Waterfront suite, brash, portentous and faux-naive by turns, doesn't even come close. The Chichester Psalms, which received a fine performance from the young chorister Marcus Frew, singing without a microphone, and from the BBC Singers and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, is a sincere, well-meaning piece, but there's something more than a bit Lloyd Webber-ish about the quiet final section.

No effort was spared to give this concert a sense of occasion: presenter Tommy Pearson introduced Bernstein's biographer Humphrey Burton and his eldest daughter Jamie, who contributed her memories of the composition of the Chichester Psalms. But there was an emptiness at the heart of this event - in the music itself.

Dermot Gault

Dizzee Rascal

The Ambassador

Quash the rumour that as a live performer Dizzee disappoints. The 20-year-old east London rapper's lyrical execution was second-to-none and fans of his grimy hip-hop were wholly satisfied by his near flawless display.

Complimenting his razor-sharp rhyming were Dizzee's on-stage antics and good humour. His visible delight to be performing here infiltrated the crowd, adding vibrancy to the show. The Ambassador was by no means full - the only criticism of the night - and people at the back weren't overly enthusiastic. But I suspect a small proportion of the crowd came to see Black Twang first and Dizzee as an afterthought but were pleasantly surprised.

Dizzee favours the fast-paced 130 beats per minute, and he barely paused to draw breath throughout the hour-long show. Truly a spirited affair, the hardcore fans didn't give their feet a chance to touch the ground from the moment Dizzee appeared. "You people are gonna respect me if it kills you," sang Dizzee at the crowd, who shouted their approval in response.

With his distinctive voice with a slight Jamaican twang, Dizzee started out as a jungle MC at the age of 16. Winner of the 2003 Mercury Prize for his critically acclaimed debut album Boy in the Corner, Dizzee has since been hailed as the saviour of UK garage and The Streets' Mike Skinner has called him "the future of music". While garage has never really taken off here, Dizzee seems to be the exception to this.

Dizzee's follow-up album Showtime proved he was more than a flash in the pan and he has recently supported Jay-Z and N.E.R.D. as he tentatively tries to break the US market. Support from Black Twang, K9 and B Sharp was of the calibre expected and should really have been a separate show.

Ali Bracken