Reviews

Irish Times writers review Opera Ireland at the Gaiety Theatre, Fred Hersch Trio at the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, Guinness Choir, UO/Antunes at the Waterfront in Belfast, NCC/Ortner at the National Gallery, Dublin and O'Rourke, RTÉ NSO/Yuasa at the NCH in Dublin

Opera Ireland

Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Puccini - Turandot

For over two decades now, Opera Ireland and its precursor, the Dublin Grand Opera Society, have left Puccini's last opera, the incomplete Turandot, to other companies to perform in Ireland.

The last Turandot they presented at the Gaiety was in 1986. It's filed in my memory as the day-glo Turandot for the style of colouring favoured by its creator Dario Micheli. The new production, directed by Dieter Kaegi, is more on the lines of Turandot meets Nixon in China

The plain metal-stepped set by Paul Keogan and the muted costumes by Joan O'Clery seem intended to evoke the China of the 1970s. There's the military marshalling of the chorus, their use of things red, and even a video of a red-clad Turandot getting out of a limousine.

When the curtain rose for Act II on the opening night to reveal Ping, Pang and Pong pedalling vigorously on unmoving bicycles to a backdrop image of a street crowded with cyclists, the audience responded with a burst of appreciative applause. It was that kind of evening.

Well, it was and it wasn't. On the positive side there was the vocally-refined, subtly-touching Liù of Mari Moriya, the winner of this year's Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, here making her Irish stage début.

And the combination of the Opera Ireland Chorus with a chorus from the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Quangzhou, China, generated an exceptional weight of youthful choral tone that was remarkable for the force of its expression.

The icy princess herself, Stefania Spaggiari, was another matter entirely. She was variable in tone, sometimes hard to hear, sometimes loud and squally, and had a wilful style of acting which found her usually doing something that managed to be visually distracting.

Kaegi's production made the sturdy Calaf of Warren Mok seem strangely peripheral, an effect reinforced by leaving the work as a torso and taking the action no further than the death of Liù in the third act. As presented here the work could more sensibly be called Liù than Turandot.

The recent renovations of the Gaiety have brought a major extension of the pit. The good news is that this seems to have effectively transformed the orchestral sound. Under Bruno dal Bon the RTÉ Concert Orchestra revealed a depth of tone that were previously almost unimaginable at this theatre in this kind of repertoire.

Fred Hersch Trio

Triskel Arts Centre, Cork

Ray Comiskey

Despite being unceremoniously dropped as a venue for the recent jazz festival in Cork, the Triskel has continued to present a jazz programme which, for its quality, diversity, and mix of internationally-acclaimed and Irish musicians, is a model for anyone. To this can now be added the Fred Hersch Trio.

Hersch is rightly regarded as being among the finest living jazz pianists, with an all-inclusive musical personality reflected in the repertoire he presented with bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson.

Ranging over the work of saxophonist Wayne Shorter (Miyako, Black Nile), innovator Ornette Coleman (Forerunner), Monk (Work), two standards (Change Partners and I Fall In Love Too Easily), his own originals (one of which, A Lark, was dedicated to trumpeter/composer Kenny Wheeler), he gave us music in which his penchant for structure and an instinctive tidiness nevertheless retained an openness to dialogue and the unexpected.

At times it recalled the interactivity of the Evans trio with bassist Scott LaFaro, and it says much for the adaptability of McPherson, who had to do much reading of a sometimes demanding book during the concert, that he was so effective and tasteful in this context, which starkly contrasted with the visceral energy required during his last visit here a few years ago with pianist Jason Moran's trio.

As for Hersch, he is of a different order to the vast majority of jazz pianists. The variety of devices he has at his command - to the usual comping and harmonic recasting he can add two-handed unison and harmonised lines, contrary motion, the ability to "chase" each hand's ideas, sometimes in canon - won't strike classicists as anything extraordinary. But he deploys them in improvisations in which unwritten interplay is taking place with his colleagues, and he does so with taste, judgement and coherence which are rare enough in jazz.

And a sense of beauty, fun and depth. His solo encore, Lotus Blossom, the quirkily demanding interaction of Forerunner and lithe, inventive playfulness of Change Partners, the emotional depth of Black Dog Pays A Visit and I Fall In Love Too Easily, all revealed his range. And, satisfying as this was, the next night he gave a concert at the Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire which, if anything, was even better.

Belfast Philharmonic Choir, Guinness Choir, UO/Antunes

Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Michael Dervan

Verdi - Requiem

Conductor Celso Antunes got the combined Belfast Philharmonic and Guinness Choirs off to a wonderfully atmospheric start in his Verdi Requiem with the Ulster Orchestra on Friday.

The promise of the opening, however, was only fitfully lived up to in a performance that often sounded like the final rehearsal for something that would be really fine, rather than the real thing itself.

It was good to hear so many of the work's moments of tenderness and warmth conveyed with sensitivity. The care with which Antunes sculpted individual choral lines and ensured musically sound balances was commendable, as was his concern not to overpower the vocal soloists.

But somehow, the eruptions of the Dies Irae notwithstanding, the music sounded underplayed. An essential thrust was missing in an evening where Antunes's musical approach, most untypically for him, seemed to lack real strength of character.

The four soloists made an uneven team. The bass Andreas Hörl was too often tremulous in tone, and wide of the mark in intonation, and the generally reliable mezzo soprano Graciela Araya, who shadowed soprano Majella Cullagh beautifully in the Agnus Dei, was at other times oddly flaky. Cullagh and tenor Rodrigo Orrego gave consistent pleasure.

The performance was at its best in the closing Libera me, but, even here the musical grip was not always of the firmness the work demands.

NCC/Ortner

National Gallery, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Schoenberg - De Profundis

Friedrich Cerha - Das Verzeichnis

Bruckner - Os justi. Christus factus est. Ave Maria

Michael Radulescu - Deutsche Messe in F

Schoenberg - Friede auf Erden

Schubert - Psalm 92

Guest conductor Erwin Ortner offered a programme of music from his native Vienna at the National Gallery on Thursday for the second stop of the three-city musical tour of the National Chamber Choir's winter series.

The programme was unusual and concentrated. Its unorthodox appearance was explained by the fact that Ortner had constructed it as a musical journey from darkness into light. The opening work, Arnold Schoenberg's late setting of the De Profundis, set many aspects of the tone of the evening's performances. The choral sound was both big and delicate, and Ortner showed himself ready to drive the singers fearlessly in the piece's implorings and expressions of hope.

Friedrich Cerha's Das Verzeichnis (The List) sets a register of names of people executed as witches in 17th century Würzburg. The aspects of vocalisation and noise-making (stomping of feet) which might have seemed shockingly avant-garde when the work was new in 1969, still seem shocking today, but now in a deep and directly expressive way. The enormity of the subject matter fully explains the means employed.

One of the great pleasures of an on-form National Chamber Choir is the thoroughness with which the singers make chameleon-like changes from one style into another. The shift from Cerha back in time to Bruckner provided one of those moments on Thursday, Bruckner sounding as balm after the nerve-wracking of the Cerha.

Michael Radulescu's Deutsche Messe in F, written in 1976, essays a strange range of extremes, including a kind of forced jubilation. The members of the NCC took to the often rocketing lines of this mass with relish.

And they sounded as fully fired in Schoenberg's intense and intensely optimistic Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth).

Here Ortner seemed to take an especial delight in driving climaxes as far as possible without going actually over the top. The sheer volume and fullness of tone at times provided an experience akin to total sonic immersion.

The evening's low point, oddly, came at the end, when Schubert's Hebrew setting of Psalm 92, sounded oddly-jointed and ill-adjusted. Perhaps that shouldn't have been a surprise after the extreme and highly successful vocal exertions that had preceded it.

O'Rourke, RTÉ NSO/Yuasa

NCH, Dublin

Andrew Johnstone

Shostakovich - Festive Overture

Chopin - Piano Concerto No 1

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No 2

IIrish pianist Miceál O'Rourke is a leading exponent of John Field, the Irish composer who was in many ways the model for Chopin.

O'Rourke was, therefore, close to home territory in Chopin's Concerto No 1, yet the performance as a whole didn't entirely solve this work's well known problems.

The orchestral accompaniment is opaquely scored, and although guest conductor Takuo Yuasa secured a sensitive grading of the dynamics, his deployment of a large cohort of strings curtailed the composer's already meagre woodwind colourings.

For O'Rourke this meant a restricted range of dynamics and colour, within which much of his passage work would not divide itself into a foreground and background. Nor were his many exacting forays to the top end of the keyboard without a few near misses.

Still, the serene slow movement exercised its soothing power over a Friday night audience, and the breezy finale drew a prolonged ovation. O'Rourke returned an encore with more Chopin: an especially bleak-sounding Nocturne in C sharp minor Op 27 No 1.

The promise of verve and precision that had been held out by Yuasa's rambunctious account of Shostakovich's Festive Overture was fulfilled after the interval with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 2 - a piece that squeezes every last drop out of some already shrivelled Ukrainian folk themes.

In complete contrast to the concerto, this symphony left no section of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra unexposed. The zestful pacing, slick ensemble work and polished solo playing all testified to sound musicianship, efficient rehearsal and stimulating direction.