Reviews

Reviewed: OSC/Marriner, Chamber Music Weekendand NCC/MacKay

OSC/Marriner NCH, Dublin

Beethoven - Symphony No 6 (Pastoral). Symphony No 7.

There's an old saw in the musical world that there are no good or bad orchestras, only good and bad conductors. Change the conductor and you can change the orchestra, sometimes with almost unbelievable speed and efficiency.

Anyone who frequents orchestral concerts will likely have their own list of startling transformations. Mine includes collaborations between Iona Brown and what was then the New Irish Chamber Orchestra, Bryden Thomson with what was then the RTÉ SO, and Harry Christophers in a Messiah with the RTÉ CO. To that list must now be added Neville Marriner with the Orchestra of St Cecilia. The OSC often plays as if a warm heart and the suggestion of good intentions should be sufficient for a satisfying performance. The orchestra is often frustrating. Its manager, Lindsay Armstrong, combines deeply-held idealism (witness his complete Bach cantata series), real programming savoir-faire, and an unwavering commitment to Irish conductors and soloists. Yet at the same time he has to deal with financial constraints, which invite the cutting of corners.

For Monday's debut under Marriner the orchestra offered two of the most popular Beethoven symphonies, in performances that brought new levels of musical alertness and consistency to their playing.

Marriner is a man who likes to know that every detail, however minor, has been attended to. Interpretatively, you could probably describe him as being in the middle ground. However, he's there not as a follower, but rather as a definer. He's one of those conductors under whom the middle ground can sound full and rich and revealing.

He brought a welcome lightness of touch to the orchestra's playing of the Pastoral Symphony, and with it a level of transparency that showed that every smallest inflection, every subsidiary trill, every fading phrase-end, was attended to with grace-yielding intention. The Pastoral, with its proto-minimalistic repetitiveness, is the most perilous of Beethoven's symphonies. Under Marriner, it glowed as an always self-renewing organism.

The Seventh is altogether more self-sustaining. He controlled its energy and fire with a sense of judicious balance. The orchestral sound may have been a lot smaller than one usually hears in this work, but the careful pacing and control of climaxes meant that the impact was never compromised.

Not every technical detail in the playing fell neatly into place. It will be interesting to see how things develop for next Monday's programme of Haydn, Mozart and Mendelssohn. - Michael Dervan

Chamber Music Weekend RDS, Dublin

The annual weekend of concerts that maintains the RDS's venerable tradition of promoting chamber music featured, for the third year running, one of Britain's longest-established ensembles. Still with two original members (first violinist Levon Chilingirian and cellist Philip De Groote), the Chilingirian Quartet are now in their 37th year.

In a programme that included the piano quintets by Brahms and Sofia Gubaidulina, they were joined, as last year, by pianist Finghin Collins. As last year too, Collins was firmly in the driving seat.

Though it's one of her student works from the 1950s, Gubaidulina has never disowned her substantial and sure-footed quintet. Its mechanised jollity and martial pastiche could easily pass for Shostakovich, but here and there a distinctive voice is raised.

While Collins judged well the extremes to which he could take the percussive and jangling piano part, the string players as a whole didn't muster an equal resonance. Rather, it was their individual contributions that struck home, with Levon Chilingirian especially warming to his subject in the slow movement.

The Brahms got a fearless outing that pulled no punches in the raging scherzo and stormy finale, although there was still room for more polish and organic sonority from the strings.

The collaboration thus resembled last season's with Collins, when the quartet were less fine than when they played on their own. So I regretted having been unable to attend their previous evening's performance of quartets by Haydn (Op 64 No 6), Bartók (No 4) and Beethoven (Op 132).

A third concert was given by Triocca, an ensemble consisting of the recherché combination that Bax and Debussy both stumbled upon around the same time - flute, viola and harp.

Bax's Elegiac Trio and Debussy's Sonata framed an hour-long sequence that also included items with accompaniments enterprisingly rearranged for harp.

Though the adaptation of the original piano part resulted in a certain loss of contrast between the individual variations of Britten's Lachrymae, the song by Dowland that serves as its theme emerged in the final bars with a poignancy heightened by the lute-like texture. Nancy Johnson's playing of the solo viola part was appropriately subdued and stoical.

In Saint-Saëns's Romance Op 37, harpist Geraldine O'Doherty brought orchestral bloom and colour to her backing of an outgoing solo by flautist Ríona O'Duinnín.

Playing together, the trio revealed an assured, easy grasp of their diaphanous and exotic repertoire. - Andrew Johnstone

NCC/MacKay National Gallery, Dublin

Stanford - Three Motets Op 38.

Byrd - Mass for Five Voices.

Alessandro Timossi - Tre mottetti nuziali.

In the first of a series devoted to the diverse musical cultures of three European cities, the National Chamber Choir sampled the works of three Londoners - two by adoption (Stanford and Timossi) and one by birth (Byrd).

But this was music that could travel anywhere, such is its broadness of outlook, its sureness of technique, and its certainty of style.

Conductor Brian MacKay kept interpretive effects to a minimum in Byrd's Mass, generally leaving the sparse and apprehensive polyphony to its own inscrutable devices.

Some of his core performance decisions, however, worked to disadvantage. A low pitch, although historically tenable, severely restricted the sonority of the sopranos and altos, while a uniformly slow pulse, although apt for the penitential Kyrie and Agnus Dei, prolonged the Gloria and Credo.

The singing was altogether more motivated in Alessandro Timossi's Tre mottetti nuziali. With their racy texts (translated into modern Italian from ancient Egyptian love poetry) and busy music, these lively and fascinating pieces are less churchly than madrigalian in spirit.

Timossi, who's a professor of composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, lucidly combines pervasively fugal materials with accessible yet garden-fresh harmonies.

The manner recalls Carl Nielsen, and while the contrapuntal activity could sometimes afford to take a little more respite, it's a stimulating contrast to the meditative stasis characteristic of much of today's new choral work.

Rather than being a suite, Stanford's Latin motets are stand-alone pieces intended as sung graces for dinner at Trinity College Cambridge, and it made sense to disperse them through the programme.

Justorum animae served as a spacious if understated opener, the polychoral Coelos ascendit hodie injected a burst of much-needed energy after the protracted solemnities of Byrd, and Beati quorum via made for a touchingly tranquil close. - Andrew Johnstone