Reviews

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

Axa Dublin International Piano Competition Semi-Finals NCH, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Rather than working out who to include in the list of six players for the Axa Dublin International Piano Competition finals, I thought it would be interesting instead to work backwards. Begin with the necessary eliminations from the 12 in the semi-finals.

Marco Fatichenti, who had wowed with his thunderously big-boned account of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka in round one, and daringly mixed the sublime with the ridiculous in round two (Beethoven's Op 111 and Granados's Valses Poeticos) scuppered his chances with a series of hair-raising memory lapses, which caused him to excise around 10 lines of music from an otherwise imposing performance of Brahms's F minor Sonata.

Esther Park took on Liszt's Reminiscences de Don Juan, the piece that famously brought the house down for Enrico Pace in the 1991 competition, but found it had rather more notes than she had a musical grasp of.

Chenxin Xu took a Lisztian approach to Schumann's Carnaval, creating an experience that was like being hit on the head while being run off your feet.

Tatiana Kolesova sounded lovely but harmonically pale in Schumann's Kreisleriana, and rather underplayed the jazz colouring in some of Nikolai Kapustin's Concert Études.

Kyu Yeon Kim gave an ugly, overplayed account of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and Rina Sudo treated Prokofiev's Sixth Sonata as a series of technical hurdles, admittedly surmounted with ease.

But, sorry, I'm rather running away with myself. The jury actually voted Kim and Sudo into the finals.

In spite of his prettified Bartók and overly ethereal Ravel, I was a lot more taken by Eduard Kunz (his deadly misjudgement of parts of the Bach/Busoni Chaconne in round one may have tilted the balance on him, since the jury are said to take all the performances they have heard into consideration). And I would happily also have heard more from François Dumont too, though, like Kunz, the peak of his playing came in round two.

Roberto Plano's timing was altogether better, his beautifully coloured, understated account of Schubert's late B flat Sonata showing him at his best in the semi-finals, and Romain Descharmes was always solidly grounded in a soundly thought-out performance of Brahms's Piano Pieces, Op 118.

Gilles Vonsattel scored much more strongly in his delicately glowing Debussy than in his Poulenc or Prokofiev. And Libor Novacek, playing Schubert and Liszt, suggested a depth of unflappable, mature musicianship that leaves him top of my personal list heading into the finals.

The field may now well be wide open. No observer I spoke to had the confidence to offer the name of a clear leader to take the prize after the concerto finals on Thursday and Friday.

The outcome is unlikely to be seriously affected by the specially commissioned Irish test pieces in the semi-finals. None of the performers seemed to get fully inside the new works, though John Gibson's Moladh go deo le Dia fared better in performance than either Elaine Agnew's Seagull or Rhona Clarke's Tread Softly. The challenges of John McLachlan's Grand Action were not taken on.

Final Fantasy Whelan's, Dublin

Davin O'Dwyer

The Canadian music scene just keeps producing essential bands, but instead of the dense sound and sprawling line-ups of Broken Social Scene or The Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy is all about one man and his violin.

Owen Pallett might have arranged the strings on The Arcade Fire's Funeral, but it is as Final Fantasy that the classically trained violinist is making his mark on "Can-rock".

This performance was another presentation organised by Foggy

Notions magazine (after its Bonnie "Prince" Billy show last month), and Pallett was appropriately preceded on stage by the ridiculously talented Dublin Guitar Quartet, who play classical music (by the likes of Philip Glass) on electric guitar.

Pallett, on the other hand, plays gorgeous pop music with one violin. He sounds like a one-man string section, however, using a pedal-controlled sampler to loop elements over each other, building the components and his warm vocals into intricate, scintillating songs.

He certainly has no shortage of sumptuous songs to play. His debut album, Has A Good Home, is filled with achingly beautiful melodies, such as This is the Dream of Win and Regine and The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead. His just-released second album, the bizarrely titled He Poos Clouds, is an even more consistent piece of work, featuring a string quartet throughout.

Pallett was joined for some songs by a drummer called Philip ("We got him in Cologne," explained Pallett, "they sell drummers on the streets there. I paid top dollar for him"), which added texture to the Final Fantasy sound. The other "instrument" was a humble overhead projector, standing to one side of the stage, evoking classrooms and scribbled lecture notes.

When Steph the projectionist turned it on, however, she treated the audience to a whimsical puppetry display, full of medieval fairy tales, floating violinists, castles, kings, kites and kissing couples, with chapters called things like Final Fantasy as Orpheus and Journey to Hades. It was probably the first time an overhead projector and a violin have achieved such unity of purpose, but after this performance, no string quartet should be without one.