Review

Irish Times writers review  Roewer, ICO/Sirbu at the National Gallery, Paul Watkins, Simon Crawford-Phillips at the Elmwood Hall in Belfast and Han, Philharmonia of the Nations/Frantz at the Mahony Hall in the Helix, Dublin.

Roewer, ICO/Sirbu

National Gallery,

Dublin

Michael Dervan

Mozart - Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Raymond Deane - Dekatriad. Schubert - Rondo in A. Halvorsen - Passacaglia for violin and viola after Handel.

Webern - Langsamer Satz. Shostakovich/Barshai - Chamber Symphony Op 110

The appearance by the Irish Chamber Orchestra at the Shaw Room of the National Gallery in Dublin was something of a homecoming for the orchestra's principal guest director Mariana Sirbu. She was a regular performer there in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the gallery was the Dublin venue used by RTÉ's then quartet in residence, the Academica String Quartet, of which she was leader.

She certainly sounded fully at home in most of the programme.

Mozart's evergreen Eine kleine Nachtmusik was delivered in a manner that was both robust and sensitive. The more grotesque elements of Raymond Deane's obsessive Dekatriad were well attended to, and Halvorsen's fanciful elaboration of Handel's Passacaglia in G minor glowed and sparkled, with Sirbu and viola-player Joachim Roewer having their soloistic burden somewhat lightened in an arrangement with string orchestra.

Schubert's extended Rondo in A, D438, is a work that, siren-like, lures violinists to a perilous endeavour. Sirbu showed the necessary mastery of the notes, but the requisite lightness and charm were not in evidence at this performance of the piece, which also calls for incredible subtlety of variation in performance if it's not to sound unduly repetitive and overlong.

Sirbu and her players relished the very different challenges and opportunities presented by the highly-contrasted intensity of the two closing pieces.

Both the high romanticism of Webern's early Slow movement for string quartet, written in the throes of an affair with the cousin he was later to marry (and played here by string orchestra), and the powerful emotional messages of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony (arranged by Rudolf Barshai from the composer's Eighth String Quartet, with its dedication "In memory of the victims of fascism and war") were communicated with the immediacy which is a hallmark of the ICO on top form.

Paul Watkins, Simon Crawford-Phillips

Elmwood Hall, Belfast

Dermot Gault

Beethoven - Cello Sonata No 4 in C.

Twelve Variations on Handel's See the Conquering Hero Comes. Cello Sonata No 5 in D.

This was the last in the series of recitals which have run concurrently with the Ulster Orchestra's recent Beethoven cycle. While the orchestral performances explored period performance practice, at least to the extent to which it can be realised on modern instruments, players in the chamber music events have been less concerned with defining a playing style (in any case the modern piano places limits on how far one can go towards a period sound).

But if the performances generally have been more unconstrained, it is mostly because the more personal style of Beethoven's chamber music writing encourages a more personal response from his performers.

In the Fourth Cello Sonata, Paul Watkins played the opening solo with a warm singing tone which was also restrained and responsive. Simon Crawford-Phillips was a sensitive partner and the two instruments were well balanced throughout.

If the first movement of the Fifth and last sonata is Beethoven at his most gruff, the final fugue is Beethoven at his most cryptic. But the middle slow movement is one of his most deeply felt, and it was played with a delicacy which conveyed true depth of feeling.

In these late works, Beethoven treats the cello and piano as equal partners. In the early Handel Variations, however, Beethoven amuses himself with florid writing for his own instrument, with the cellist either accompanying or silent for long stretches.

But Watkins managed to make his contributions tell, and he relished the main theme when he finally had it to himself.

Han, Philharmonia of the

Nations/Frantz

Mahony Hall,

The Helix, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Sibelius - Finlandia. Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 4. Rachmaninov -

Symphony No 2.

In this part of the world the German musician Justus Frantz is best-known as a pianist. The recordings he made with Christoph Eschenbach more than a quarter of a century ago, of piano duets by Schubert and Mozart, are still in circulation. He even appeared on disc in concertos with the music-loving German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt.

In Germany, his legacy includes the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, one of the world's biggest, which he founded in 1986. And in 1995 he founded the Philharmonia of the Nations, "a multicultural philharmonic orchestra," intended to fulfil a cherished dream of the late Leonard Bernstein.

The orchestra, which made its British début at the beginning of the month, played in Ireland for the first time at the Mahony Hall in The Helix on Monday.

First impressions were of an orchestra that is musically eager with the vigour of youth, and a conductor who, although he will be 60 in May, showed a similar if not greater eagerness.

As a calling-card, Sibelius's Finlandia announced that Frantz and his players were happy to take the composer's expression of Finnish nationalism and present it with over-the-top, in-your-face immediacy.

It was interesting to hear a second performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto so soon after Freddy Kempf's freshly thought-out account with the RTÉ NSO last month. Derek Han's approach was cast much more in the familiar virtuosic mould. His playing was not without its touches of delicacy, but the manner was altogether firmer and more predictable of gesture than Kempf.

Rachmaninov's symphonies are not the sort of repertoire one associates with German conductors, and Frantz's account certainly lacked the finesse and the richness of undertones that Irish audiences have become familiar with through the performances of Alexander Anissimov.

Frantz presented the work in bold primary colours and with an abundance of raw emotion.

A more seasoned orchestra might have known to hold something back in the face of some of the conductor's urgings. But the young players of the Philharmonia of Nations were happy to let rip, with the result that the excitement sought was duly delivered, even if it disrupted the unfolding of the music's larger plan.