Reviews

Irish Times writers review a selection of events in the arts world.

AXA International Piano Competition Round 2, RDS, Dublin

You can divide up the field of young pianists at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition in all sorts of interesting ways. There are the musicians and the showmen. There are those who take risks and those who play safe. There are individuals who play a little too fast (not at all uncommon) and others who go a little too slow (predictably, much rarer). You don't have to wait long to encounter someone playing rather too loud but you could be a long time waiting for someone whose playing tends in the opposite direction.

You could follow on in other areas, from matters of facial expression, grunting, dress and decorum, to choice of repertoire (chalk and cheese is a favourite ploy), and preferences between the three available pianos and even piano stools.

But the divider that matters most of course is the one between those who get on the list for the next roundand those who don't. And the members of the jury, although they are collectively responsible for the final verdict, often disagree among themselves. The 2003 winner, Antti Siirala, is to date the only player to have been awarded the AXA competition's top prize by a unanimous vote.

Where does this leave the young pianists and the dedicated listeners who are trying to figure out what's going on? Well, it means that the centre is likely to hold. And for a 15-member jury of piano professionals the likelihood is that they will find it easier to agree on the nuts and bolts of the pianism than the finer points of musical interpretation.

High on their semi-final list of 12 at the moment must be the extraordinary control and finish of Eduard Kunz, whose selection of three Scarlatti sonatas was simply astonishing, the almost effortless-seeming traversal of Ravel's treacherous Gaspard de la nuit by François Dumont, and the glowing, interior light of Libor Novacek's account of the same composer's Tombeau de Couperin. I was sorry to see the jury overlook the imaginatively rounded musicianship of Benjamin Smith (I thought his account of the Barber Sonata far more to the point than the one by Esther Park, who got the jury's nod), and also disappointed that the maturely-balanced, highly-characterful Sasha Grynyuk has also exited (he may have been undone by his brief memory glitches).

Players who seemed to me to up their game in the second round included Kyu Yeon Kim (at her best in fugal Beethoven) and Romain Descharmes (who hit his peak in Wagner reimagined by Liszt), though two rounds in I haven't managed to divine the musical qualities that are keeping Rina Sudo and Tatiana Kolesova in the race, although the standard of their delivery is unquestionable.

Also through to the semi-finals at the NCH today and tomorrow are Roberto Plano, Giles Vonsattel, Chenxin Xu and Marco Fatichenti. Sadly, that means we've also heard the last of the fantastical, intriguing Ching-Yun Hu. - Michael Dervan

O'Sullivan, Murphy, NCH Dublin

Thursday's fund-raising concert for next year's Fifth Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition paired her former student Andrew Murphy (now a seasoned bass-baritone in the opera houses of Germany, Austria and Switzerland) with leading Irish soprano Cara O'Sullivan (who, though never one of Dr Dunne's pupils, regards her as a mentor).

Their solos and duets were interspersed by an idiomatic-sounding Opera Ireland Chorus under Cathal Garvey in short extracts from Gounod's Faust, Verdi's Nabucco, Strauss's Die Fledermaus and Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. At the piano, one-woman orchestra Mairéad Hurley delivered all the accompaniments with a mixture of bravado, sensitivity and expertise.

As Basilio (La calunnia) from Rossini's Il Barbiere and as Silva (Infelice) from Verdi's Ernani, Murphy shone. His characterisations were masterly, his voice succulent.

O'Sullivan's range and power were as impressive as ever, often making you think that the concert hall or theatre that's too big for her to fill with sound doesn't exist. But as Fiordiligi (Temerari . . . Comè scoglio) from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, she showed a mature and more attenuated artistry.

In duet with Murphy in Bess you is my woman now from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, O'Sullivan substituted much of her energetic vibrato with an even tone and a beguiling portamento. This superbly matched performance made it all the more regrettable that La ci darem la mano from Mozart's Don Giovanni had been replaced with Bless This House. - Andrew Johnstone

Bert Jansch, Whelan's, Dublin

It's been 33 years and 21 solo albums since Pentangle split, and Bert Jansch, the demi-god of the guitar ploughs his own furrow with the dogged determination of a traveller long tired of the road. Surrounded by acolytes salivating at the prospect of re-living the highs of Jack Orion or Bert And John, he wrestled with countless chords and notes, valiantly attempting to relive past glories, but all too often unintentionally detouring them, as though they were hamlets no longer accessible via picturesque pathways.

Bert Jansch's guitar work has been the envy of everyone from Jimmy Page to Bernard Butler and Johnny Marr (the latter two collaborated with him in 2000 on Crimson Moon), but there were few traces of the magic of old in Wexford St last Thursday night. Throughout a lacklustre set that never quite managed to ignite, Jansch sallied from reedy folk (including a particularly one-dimensional reading of Rosemary Lane) to struggling acoustic blues (Strolling Down The Highway). Even his attempts to drag his repertoire into the 21st century faltered at the first hurdle, as he lumbered through the American song unearthed by Beth Orton, Katie Cruel. Listlessly tracing the song's outline, its lyrical belly punch was buried deep beneath Jansch's one-dimensional vocals.

Limbering up perceptibly after the break, he still struggled to breathe anything more than the remotest form of life into Lily Of The West, and even when the rhythmic force of Jackson C Frank's Carnival cast him a buoyancy aid, Jansch struggled to create a momentum. Somewhere in this morass lurked the possibility of goodness, if not greatness, but without even a Danny Thompson or a John Renbourn within spitting distance, this lone guitarist cut a lonesome picture on stage.

Woody Guthrie's guitar promised to kill fascists. Jansch's struggled to tweak even a nipple. - Siobhan Long

NCC/Mawby, National Gallery, Dublin

Thursday's concert was a 70th birthday tribute for the National Chamber Choir's founding conductor, now conductor emeritus, Colin Mawby, who earlier this year was awarded a papal Order of Knighthood of St Gregory for his services to church music.

It was a fitting occasion for a programme that unashamedly had no logic to it other than the personal associations for Mawby of each piece. These he described with his customary humour and zeal.

So, for example, he opened with the renaissance motets O quam gloriosum by Victoria and O beatum et sacrosanctum diem by Peter Philips, exquisite examples of a kind of music that Mawby said he associated with his friend and former teacher George Malcolm.

And here the music-making was very fine. The independent parts were perfectly balanced, the modal harmonies free and natural-sounding, and the tone-colour pure but subtly tinged with richness. Mawby easily drew out these qualities with smaller, more delicate movements than I recall him having to use when the choir was his.

He later paid generous tribute to the standard the choir had reached, and my guess would be that it was a bit like driving your old car only now in a newer model with power-steering.

Mawby's own music featured in the programme, including his jolly and mildly jazzy two-minute Jubilate Jazz, composed for this occasion and receiving its first performance. It was by a long way the liveliest piece of the evening, his selection otherwise tending to the tranquil and reflective. Under this heading were both his moving Prayer of Forgiveness, its text discovered near a child's body in a Nazi concentration camp, and his Nine Marian Anthems, an RTÉ commission premiered by the choir in 2001. They are a series of delicate miniatures which culminate in a bitter-sweet poignancy at the contrast between the lilting "alleluias" of Felix es, sacra Virgo Maria ("You are happy, O holy Virgin Mary") and the depiction of Mary at the cross which immediately follows.

He also included his late friend Lennox Berkeley's Mass for five voices, a work dedicated to Mawby and commissioned for the Choir of Westminster Cathedral in 1964. It is beautiful music, sustaining a devotional serenity throughout (even the "hosannas" are gentle!), and linking the renaissance sound-world of Victoria and Philips with the English mid-20th-century music scene from which Mawby came. - Michael Dungan