The critics' year in music

Hits and Misses 1999

Classical - Michael Dervan

Hit

Kirov Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Valery Gergiev. Waterfront Hall, Belfast, June 11th

The two events of 1999 with absolutely the highest tingle factor came at opposite ends of the scale. The concert by the Kirov Opera at Belfast's Waterfront Hall was the sort of thing of which legends are made. The company's conductor, Valery Gergiev, is a musical visionary with the all-encompassing grasp of his craft that makes every detail fall into place.

It's not a frequent occurrence at any sort of live performance to leave with the feeling that everything has been just right. But, with a minimum of showmanship and a wonderful sense of undemonstrative elan from the chorus and orchestra, that's exactly what Gergiev's Pushkin-inspired evening delivered.

I also enjoyed . . .

Ioana Petcu, Sarah Sexton, Samantha Miller, Sarah McMahon, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, July 4th

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival produced the surprise of the year: a group of young Irish players taking to the string quartet medium like the proverbial ducks to water. The four, as I reported at the time, simply took my breath away with their playing of Schubert's Quartet in A minor. Everything gelled with such effortless ease and aptness of scale that I was left with the feeling that I'd never heard a professional quartet play Schubert quite as rewardingly as this. It has to be good news that the group is still working together, as the Callino Quartet, and already has a tour lined up in the Netherlands next year.

Ann Murray, National Concert Hall, November 21st

Other events which linger with special resonance in the musical memory include Ann Murray singing Berlioz's Les nuits d'ete. How shameful that it took until 1999 for the most successful and internationally-lauded Irish singer alive today to make her debut with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Joanna MacGregor, Music Network Tour, May 2nd-15th

Joanna MacGregor is a pianist who does things very much her own way. The programme for her Music Network tour in May was challengingly crafted - points of musical contact and distinction well delineated, no fillers, no pandering, everything to her own taste - and the playing was distinctively individual. Sandwiching Gerald Barry between Bach and Beethoven, or Thelonius Monk between Chopin and Bartok isn't an everyday occurrence. But MacGregor has the knack of turning such juxtapositions into rewarding surprises.

BBC Philharmonic, NCH, May 17th

The BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Tortelier showed what a wonderful piece the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition can be if you treat it as French rather than Russian.

Ann Elise Smoot, St Michael's, Dun Laoghaire, August 8th

Ann Elise Smoot's organ recital combined light virtuosity and deep musicianship with unerring sureness.

Miss

John O'Conor, NSO/Alexander Anissimov, NCH, May 7th

Unerring sureness was just what John O'Conor lacked in his handling of Brahms's Second Piano Concerto with the NSO under Alexander Anissimov at the beginning of May. O'Conor's sterling work in furthering his ambitions for an academy of the performing arts and his success in building the Dublin International Piano Competition are far from matched through the shaky lack of mastery he displayed with faltering finger and memory in this key 19th-century concerto.

Rock - Kevin Courtney

Hit

David Bowie, HQ @ Hall of Fame, October 10th

He's reached the highest heights of pop brilliance, and plumbed the deepest depths of pretentious guff, but when Bowie played an invite-only gig at the HQ venue in Abbey Street, he kept just to the right side of rock 'n' roll. The 52-year-old Bowie took the stage, looking like his evil wizard character in Labyrinth, and performed a mesmerising version of Life On Mars. Other oldies included Wild Is The Wind, Rebel Rebel and a rare 1960s nugget, Can't Help Thinking About Me. Songs from his new album, Hours . . . , didn't fare too badly either, particularly the single, Thursday's Child.

I also enjoyed . . .

The Undertones, Nerve Centre, Derry, November 19th

John Hume declared Derry's new multimedia premises open, but The Undertones christened it with a storming gig which got the crowd pogo-ing like it was 1979. The band reformed specially for this launch, but couldn't get Fergal Sharkey to return to the mike, so they recruited another Derryman, Paul McCloone, former singer with The Carrelines and currently a producer on Today FM.

The Flaming Lips, Olympia, August 31st

A bizarre, blood-spattered mix of redemptive pop, visceral visuals and performance art, this gig by American indie band Flaming Lips was also hugely entertaining. Lead singer Wayne Coyne, looking like Zod in Superman II, took the stage with fake blood streaming from his forehead, wielding a weird glove puppet in one hand, and bashing a giant gong with the other. A giant screen showed close-ups of eye operations while the three-piece band performed songs from the excellent The Soft Bulletin album, using tape loops and sequencers along with live instruments and an onscreen drummer. Grrreat.

Miss

The MTV Awards, Point, November 11th

Face it, the Irish public and media were mere extras in this televised ego-fest, which saw stars like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Puff Daddy jockeying for exposure on prime-time MTV. Iggy Pop injected a bit of rock 'n' roll into the proceedings, but he was fighting a losing battle. Marilyn Manson came on wearing a Stetson and a nappy, looking like a skinny Garth Brooks who had just fallen into a cowpat, and sounding pretty bovine too. The next morning, we all woke up with hangovers and felt a twinge of shame that we had been sucked into the whole thing.

Opera - Michael Dervan

Hit

Boris Godunov, Opera Ireland, Gaiety Theatre, November 21st THE operas that created the most stir this year were from Opera Ireland: Richard Strauss's Salome (Gaiety Theatre, April 11th) and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. With a towering if not always subtle presence in Gidon Saks's Boris, and Alexander Anissimov stirring up a strong Russian potion from the RTECO in the pit, how could an opera as uniquely powerful as Boris fail? It's really good news that artistic director Dieter Kaegi is managing to make serious headway in broadening the company's outlook.

I also enjoyed . . .

Don Giovanni, Grand Opera House, Belfast, opened November 9th

Welsh National Opera's Belfast visit in November offered in Don Giovanni a standard of musical preparation that no Irish company can yet match. The voices didn't sound particularly large, but were always beautifully balanced with the orchestra, and the playing under Anthony Negus was impeccably clear.

Miss

La traviata, Castleward Opera, Grand Opera House, Belfast, March 24th

Castleward Opera's La traviata was one of those productions where hardly anything flickered into life. If the Arts Council of Northern Ireland thought it couldn't do worse than support Opera Northern Ireland (whose funding ACNI dramatically withdrew last year) now it knows it can.

Jazz - Ray Comiskey

Hit

Ernst Reijseger, Dublin Jazz Week, October 26th

The major event of the year for me was the performance of cellist Ernst Reijseger in his solo concert at the Hugh Lane Gallery during the hugely successful second Dublin Jazz Week. In an event that was wonderful for, among other things, the quality of the music heard throughout the week, Reijseger was an outstanding example of what can be done when the focus is clearly on the music - and when it is being presented in circumstances where it can be heard properly and treated with the respect it deserves.

I also enjoyed . . .

The main sponsors of Dublin Jazz Week, the ESB, can take a bow for putting up the money and then standing back and letting musicians run the show. The proof isn't confined to the quality of what was heard - it was also the response, in terms of packed venues, the way audiences listened, and in their reaction to the music; Reijseger, for example, got a richly merited standing ovation.

Miss

A miss? I'll take this literally. I missed the concert by the "free" saxophonist, Charles Gayle on Sunday, November 21st at Renards, and, if word-of-mouth from some of those who were there can be relied on, I was one of the lucky ones.

Folk - Tony Clayton-Lea

Hit

Nina Simone, Point, July 24th

Dr Nina Simone, whose gig at The Point was mostly a stunning reaffirmation of a long-forgotten force.

I also enjoyed . . .

Gillian Welch (Vicar Street, February 13th), Lucy Kaplansky (Whelans, June 2nd), Juliet Turner (HQ, July 8th), Brendan Perry (Vicar Street, October 14th) Kirsty MacColl (HQ, October 8th), Richard Thompson (HQ, August 9th) and Mark Eitzel (Temple Bar Music Centre, September 11th)

It was a good year for the singer/songwriter, with little to choose between the above. Each applied a textbook example of solo performance (nothing but an acoustic guitar and a bunch of accessible songs) that connected with the listener. In each case, also, there was something beyond the music that made them special: Gillian Welch's fussy spinster chic and burrowing guitar techniques, Lucy Kaplansky's incredible vocal delivery, Juliet Turner easily trouncing headline acts (Ron Sexsmith and Brian Kennedy, to name but two) at their own game, Brendan Perry's mesmerising mix of Scott Walker and Tim Buckley, Kirsty MacColl's wonderful world weariness, Richard Thompson's remarkable resilience in the face of commercial indifference, and Mark Eitzel's warped sense of humour.

Miss

Shania Twain, RDS, July 10th

If anything, 1999 was the year that the commercial clout of banal country music made itself well and truly felt. Compared to the likes of the virtually puritanical Gillian Welch, the leopardskin-clad Shania Twain comes across as a brazen hussy. The real difference, of course, lies not in image but in content. Twain's blowsy country rhetoric, its empty gestures writ large from Nashville to Navan, sells out the RDS, while Welch, who is rooted to the spot in the tradition of country music, barely fills Vicar Street. Shania Twain? She don't impress me much.