Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events

The Flatlake Literary and Arts Festival

Clones, Co Monaghan

The Flatlake Festival does its best to dodge stereotyping and prosaic attempts to lump it in with the ever-growing festival scene in Ireland. It is a madcap, wonderfully shambolic and creatively mixed affair. The event is more closely described as a large outdoor gathering of thoughts, torments and half-baked notions, many of them coming from the minds of the organisers. Cue Pat McCabe. Holed up for most of the weekend in a caravan under a sheet of canvas, the festival’s co-founder became “Captain Butty”, and hosted his own festival radio show at the Mondo Rancho Tent. The open back of a trailer allowed for impromptu performances of poetry, song and spoken word from many passers-by, including The Pig Executive from Leitrim, or the wonderfully entertaining Poetry Chicks, or whoever happened to have a few thoughts scribbled down.

McCabe also announced the day's line-up every morning (all liable to run behind the scheduled time or change at a moment's notice) and had special guests that ranged from Stephen Rea to his own relatives who would pop in for a chat. He played music ( Living Next Door to Alice, Spaghetti western soundtracks, and show band parodies) and divulged personal insights, such as: "Later on, of course, we have the big GAA debate, hosted by Tom McGuirk. I couldn't kick snow off a rope myself, but there you go."

As the rain introduced itself on Friday evening, Liz and the Relatives went down a stormer in the Butty Barn. Take the best of the McGarrigle Sisters and add a bunch of accomplished musicians and some finger-clicking blues, and, well, could there be a better setting than a straw-filled barn on a Friday night? At the open-air stage, Mik Artistik threw out boxes of straws (rhymes with “rounds of applause”, get it?), and sang about how Jimmy Savile had bought his album once and was going to fix it for him.

Some bands over the weekend had never actually played together before. The creative results were mixed, naturally, but even when it was really, really bad, it was good. Whether it was nervy singer songwriters struggling to play basic guitar chords, or technical glitches and unrehearsed additions to the programme, it didn’t matter really. The artistic participation in the festival was above all else, honest. And how many arts festival can you say that for anymore?

One of the largest gatherings of the weekend was on Saturday afternoon for a tribute to Harold Pinter, presented by Fintan McKeown and featuring Keith Allen and Dominic West from the US series, The Wire. All three read from articles, political statements, poems and excerpts from other works, with Allen a little too blokey for my liking and West emerging as a fine actor's actor. Who would have known?

Actor Cillian Murphy had the front row swooning for his DJ set late on Saturday night. For the most part he stuck to foot-stomping faithfuls – Beck's Loser, Nena's 99 Red Balloons, Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams, and plenty of funk, some soul and a little early 1990s rock. If he ever gives up acting, there are plenty of student bars up and down the country who would be delighted to have him on a slow Tuesday.

Of the more interesting film offerings were highlights from the Clones Film Festival Scanbitz Challenge, where competitors had to shoot and edit a film in 48 hours. The Ferretwas suitably bizarre and not a bad return for only two day's work.

During the afternoons, sports such as “toss the sheaf” or “catch the pig” went on, with clowns or performers also roaming the fairly small geographical area of the festival site, in front of the big house, Hilton Park.

The estate's owner, Johnny Madden, mingled with the crowds over the weekend, and must have been touched to receive a personal dedication from Jinx Lennon, when performing the song, Gobshite on the Hill. Lennon drew a large crowd, but didn't quite follow through on the expectation. Jack Lukeman delivered with a Paul Robeson tribute, rehearsed, he said, that afternoon in a Clones hotel, or perhaps he says that to all the festival audiences. BRIAN O'CONNELL

McMahon, IBO/Huggett

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Haydn – Symphony No 44 (Trauer); Cello Concerto in C. Mozart – Symphony No 40.

There’s that cliche about thinking you know something and then encountering it again in a new light. And being surprised and maybe excited or moved.

So it was at the Irish Baroque Orchestra’s afternoon concert in the National Gallery. Haydn’s Trauer (mourning) symphony is so familiar, the best-known of his “storm and stress” works from the 1770s. Typically, it melds classical proportions and language with an emotional openness that foreshadows Beethoven and the romantic era beyond him.

But it looks not only forward. That emotional quality echoes the “moving of the affections” essential to the music of the baroque period several decades earlier.

Bringing together these apparently disparate factors and capitalising consistently on their artistic potential, was IBO director Monica Huggett. Violinist and baroque period specialist, she emphasised, even exploited – often to thrilling and revelatory effect – whatever was baroque in what remains a product of the classical period.

Directing from the leader’s desk, she reinforced dynamic contrasts, insisted on a crisp rhythmic vitality, and sustained an edgy emotional charge throughout.

She continued in the same vein in Mozart’s much loved penultimate symphony, No 40 in G minor.

There was more of the same exquisite baroque oboe and valveless horn, now with wooden flute as well, real voices rather than mere colours, all over a vigorous foundation of period strings – light but intense, searing unanimity, an almost palpable collective zest.

Haydn's Cello Concerto in C provided respite from the emotional force of the two symphonies. The IBO's principal cellist, Sarah McMahon, captured its sunny personality and tackled its virtuosic demands with disarming poise. MICHAEL DUNGAN

Curtin, Johnson, Irish Youth Wind Ensemble/O’Reilly

DIT, Kevin Street, Dublin

James Barnes – Alvamar. Grainger – Molly on the Shore. Holst – Suite in F. Bruch – Kol Nidrei. Strauss – Serenade. Ibert – Cello Concerto. Kit Turnbull – Timelines. Martin Ellerby – Euphonium Concerto. Grainger – Irish Tune from Co Derry. Bernstein – West Side Story Suite.

“It’s like a parallel musical universe,” someone said to me at the international conference of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles in Killarney two years ago. “They have their own composers, their own conductors.”

The Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, which gave its annual Dublin concert at Gleeson Hall in DIT Kevin Street on Saturday, is a prominent part of that universe. The IYWE functions in the same was as the country’s national youth orchestras.

There’s an intensive training course, followed by the public platform of concert performances.

Saturday’s concert, conducted by the ensemble’s musical director for the last two years, Ronan O’Reilly, seemed to be trying to be much more than just a regular wind-band concert.

Along with helpings from the specialised wind-band composers, it included demanding works on a chamber scale – Richard Strauss’s early Serenade of 1881, and Jacques Ibert’s Concerto for cello and wind instruments from the mid 1920s.

It embraced other works from mainstream repertoire – Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei,a suite from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Storyand two arrangements by Percy Grainger.

The ploy is clear and commendable. Give the young players exposure to a wide repertoire, and allow the best of them the opportunity to work at a higher level in selected smaller groupings.

The problem on Saturday was a lack of consideration for the audience, for whom the evening was far too long (the concert ran for two-and-a-half hours) and the musical sequence, with no less than three concerto slots, was altogether too higgledy-piggledy.

The venue wasn't exactly helpful. Wind bands in full flight produce a very high volume of sound, and in James Barnes's Alvamar Overtureand Kit Turnbull's kitchen-sink-and-all Timelinesthe playing became uncomfortably loud, more than the hall could accommodate.

This was partly the result of Ronan O’Reilly’s very direct musical style, which favoured decisiveness over subtlety. The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s principal cellist, Martin Johnston was the clear and committed, soloist in the Bruch and Ibert.

But the star turn of the evening was Gary Curtin, the soloist in Martin Ellerby’s 1995 Euphonium Concerto, a hyperactive workout in which Curtin’s spine-tingling virtuosity seemed to inspire everyone onstage to a higher level of achievement.

And his short, all-singing, all-dancing encore, taking the euphonium to places most people simply don't know it can go, simply brought the house down. MICHAEL DERVAN

The Gondoliers

NCH, Dublin

The ominous sight of microphones looming over the orchestra and glued to the faces of the performers augurs ill for this Festival Productions' presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliersat the NCH. But, once the ears get used to the amplified sound, and the eyes have sorted out which voice is coming through the speakers at any given moment, one settles down to wallow in the familiar music and enjoy the spirited and colourful performance.

Director/designer Vivian Coates doesn’t miss a trick in his seemingly “traditional” but actually modern-paced staging. Abetted by Siobhan McQuillan’s nifty choreography, and beautifully costumed, the action fairly zips along. Another plus is the way Gilbert’s rather faded humour is given a welcome kiss-of-life by the inventive business created for the comic talents of Wilfie Pyper as a nimble Duke of Plaza-Toro, Jackie Curran-Olohan as his domineering Duchess and, especially, Adam Lawlor as an impeccable Grand Inquisitor who exploits his mock-Spanish accent to great comic effect.

The six juveniles are also cast from strength. Emma Walsh and Nicola Mulligan offer accomplished soprano lyricism as Gianetta and Cassilda; Rachel Kelly brings lustrous mezzo warmth to the role of Tessa; tenor Brian Gilligan is an elegant and soft-grained Marco; and Jamie Rock’s focused and forthright baritone contrasts his Giuseppe nicely with Barry McGonagle’s gentle Luiz. In a long list of excellent lesser roles, soprano Clare Kavanagh’s Fiametta stands out strongly.

Ensemble singing looms large in The Gondoliers, and this cast of healthy young voices handles it admirably. And there is a plethora of equally healthy voices to be heard, too, in Vincent Lynch's well-drilled and ever-busy chorus.

Conductor Aidan Faughey presides with firm hands and an experienced practitioner's feel for such important musical matters as balance, phrasing and choice of speed. JOHN ALLEN