Art Reviews

Strauss - Metamorphosen, Mahler - Lieder eines fahrenden, Gesellen Bartók - Concerto for Orchestra: Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen is a work that inhabits not just the world of orchestral string music but also that of chamber music.

The composer's subtitle makes the issue clear. Strauss called the piece "A Study for 23 Solo Strings". He sometimes treated individual players as soloists in one-to-a-part textures that sound like chamber music. At other times he grouped them into sections to create masses of orchestral weight.

The work's demands are intensified by its air of consolatory memorial.

The world of culture which Strauss valued so highly was disappearing around him. The first sketches for what became Metamorphosen were written in October 1943 on the day the Staatstheater in Munich was destroyed in a wartime bombing raid. The 80-year-old composer started the full score on March 13th, 1945, the day after the opera house in Vienna had suffered a similar fate. At the end of the score, where he quotes from the Funeral March of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, he inscribed the words "In memoriam!" at the bottom of the page.

There was an understandable tentativeness in parts of the NSO's performance under William Eddins on Friday, as the players adjusted to the exposure of their unaccustomed roles in a work that's not a regular part of their repertoire. But the playing soon warmed, and although Eddins was not entirely successful in securing either the necessary rhythmic solidity or tonal weight, he conveyed well the textural richness which is one of the work's most remarkable features.

Mahler's early Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, is a song-cycle of forlorn love with an orchestral part that's both spare of line and intense in colouring. The mezzo soprano soloist, Alison Browner, sang it plainly and often plaintively, though she was too often overpowered at the lower end of her range, sometimes through lack of vocal heft, sometimes because of the conductor's lack of attention to orchestral dynamics. However, when everything gelled, the music's expressiveness was sharp and pungent.

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, completed in 1943 and premièred a year later by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky, was one of the great successes of the composer's often dismal years in the war-time US.

The title is sometimes treated as an invitation for orchestral showmanship. Eddins maintained the necessary elements of playfulness, but avoided undue showiness and side-stepped the temptation to over-done mockery which many conductors yield to in the "Intermezzo interrotto" fourth movement. The audience responded to his finely-balanced approach with unusually prolonged applause. - Michael Dervan

Velvet Revolver - The Point

Grunge is gone, hair metal is history, and the world has long since ceased to care if Axl Rose ever gets around to releasing that new Guns 'N' Roses album. Time for Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum to regroup and reload, but even these seasoned rock monsters must have been surprised at just how spectacularly their new project has taken off. Velvet Revolver features the three ex-G'N'R guys and ex-Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, not so much filling Axl Roses' shoes as setting fire to them and kicking them into the middle of next week.

Their first Irish show, at Dublin's Point theatre, is sold out, and though you suspect that some of the older fans are here in the hope VR will play some old G'N'R tunes, most of the crowd are here to mosh to the aggressive punk-metal attack of such songs as Big Machine, Headspace, Superhuman, and Sucker Train Blues. The debut album, Contraband, has sold by the bucketload, proving that there's still an appetite for dirty, decadent, dangerous rock 'n' roll.

Weiland's wiry figure slithers around the stage, and when he coils back like a red-headed cobra, you can count the ribs and trace the sinews. Slash's trademark hair still hangs over his face, and he has the filled-out look of an ageing cowboy who's been sitting around too long waiting to get back in the saddle. Before the first song has ended, the smoking ban has been comprehensively broken, as plumes of cigarette smoke rise from the headstock of Slash's guitar. He can well afford to pay the fine.

While Weiland manages to acquit himself well on vocals, and proves himself a fine, animated frontman, it's Slash who's the star here, delivering a masterclass in fast 'n' furious guitar riffola, and reminding us what a running joke G'N'R are without him. Covers of It's So Easy and Mr Brownstone keep the nostalgists happy, but Do It For The Kids, Slither and Dirty Little Thing look straight to the future - with one middle finger defiantly pointed at the past. - Kevin Courtney