A look at what is happening in the world of the arts:
Heineken Green Synergy festival: The Fall
The Village, Dublin
Mark E Smith, frontman of the legendary Manchester band the Fall, is brilliantly unenthusiastic. Smith barks and mutters his way through songs, the lyrics impossible to make out. He wanders, uninterested, around the stage, picks at his teeth, and at one point tosses the microphone into the crowd like an empty packet of cigarettes.
But you wouldn't expect anything less. Smith has reigned over the Fall's turbulent 30-year history, firing and fighting with almost every member of the group. His gigs are renowned for on-stage scuffles. While there were no bust-ups during this gig, there was little communication between Smith and the rest of the band. The Fall live feels more like a one-man show.
The music has a jagged sound: bashful guitars, punky drums, angsty vocals. Smith's trademark snarls of "ba, ba, ba, baaa" were eagerly received by a knot of moshing, mostly male fans. The group's industrial sound has developed somewhat of a cult following - one die-hard fan at their Dublin gig had seen them more than 20 times.
Smith played a range of tracks from the latest album, Fall Heads Roll. Lines such as "What About Us" were half-shouted in the way Smith knows best. Other highlights were Blindness and Sparta FC. At one point Smith turned his back to the audience to read lyrics. With more than 25 albums to his name, you could forgive him.
Eleni Poulou, Smith's wife and keyboardist, added a certain style. With dark hair, funky boots and red nails, she played in a laconic manner, adding backing vocals. It is their inspiring half-heartedness, combining determination with reticence that makes the Fall such an exciting musical performance - even if Smith looked like he was miserable throughout.
Sorcha Hamilton
O'Brien, Syrius Trio
National Gallery, Dublin
Shostakovich/Tsiganov - 10 Preludes from Op 34. Piano Trio No 2. Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok
The newly-formed Syrius Trio recently received one of the Music Network's Young Musicwide Awards for 2006. The group's members - Elizabeth Cooney (violin), Jane O'Hara (cello) and Isabelle O'Connell (piano) - are engaged on a five-stop tour with soprano Sylvia O'Brien that's taking them around Ireland and then on to Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Their programme is dedicated to works by Shostakovich, including the Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok, which has in recent years become one of the most widely-performed of song cycles in Ireland - the current tour will bring the tally of performances since 2000 to 20.
Shostakovich began with the idea of writing a work for voice and cello for soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich but, in need of more sonorities, added in a violin and piano. Unusually, each of the seven songs in the cycle is set for a different instrument or combination of instruments, with all four performers joining forces only at the end.
The small scale of the undertaking has no bearing on the intensity of expression. Sylvia O'Brien made the most of opportunities, sounding happiest when at full volume, though also comfortable in the strange contentment she brought to the fourth song, The City is Asleep.
The members of the trio were at their best in the Blok settings. In Dmitry Tsiganov's violin and piano arrangements of Shostakovich's piano Preludes, Op 34, and the Piano Trio in E minor, a memorial to the composer's close friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, the players still seemed to be experiencing teething problems.
Elizabeth Cooney is the most rounded and characterful, and at the moment the group works best when she takes a strong lead. Isabelle O'Connell's voicing is currently often that of a soloist rather than a listening, blending partner, and Jane O'Hara, though admirably secure in the treacherous opening of the trio, is not always persuasively centred in expressive focus.
* Tours to Bray (Thurs 12) and New York
Michael Dervan
Una Hunt (piano)
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
Una Hunt has been usefully reviving the work of long-forgotten Irish composers, much of it excavated from the collections of the National Library, by recording it on CD. She is promoting her latest RTÉ lyric fm collection, Fallen Leaves from an Irish Piano Album, by taking the music on tour.
The CDs provide a real service, but bringing the same selection of material on tour seems, even on first principles, a less persuasive idea. The formal setting of a concert with a fixed programme offers an experience completely different to the pick-and-choose possibilities of a CD.
The piano music of even the best-known of Hunt's resuscitations - John Field, Charles Villiers Stanford and Michele Esposito - is nowadays usually offered in small samplings when it is offered at all. Putting it together with commercial music written by lesser figures for a domestic performance market is like presenting a meal of none-too-tasty petit fours.
At Dún Laoghaire, the worthy recording project became an overly dull recital. It's perfectly obvious why even Field, composer of the most successful of the pieces - the evergreen Nocturne in B flat, which Hunt played in an interesting variant - is normally accorded a small sliver of programming time, a nocturne here, a rondo there. In similar contexts, some of the pieces Hunt offered might shine with a high curiosity value. Presented in sequence, however, the pieces' dependence on formulaic construction and their frequent melodic banality became tiresome.
Hunt's way with the music was decorative and short-breathed. She took the pieces very much on their own terms, presenting them in attractive colouring, but fighting shy of the imaginative leaps which might cast them in a new light. The imaginative spark that leading players aim to bring to the sonatas of Scarlatti, or that the likes of Marc-André Hamelin and Stephen Hough lavish on later music, are not part of her agenda. She rounded the evening off with a major work by Chopin, the Fantasy in F minor, a move which, sadly, only served to highlight the limitations of the music which preceded it.
Michael Dervan
Il trovatore: Opus1 Opera
The Helix
Opus1 Opera's presentation of Verdi's work was something of a staging throwback. It was performed on a unit set of the old "tuppence coloured" cut-out style, and the acting involved plenty of strutting, clutching and good old-fashioned sabre-rattling. Musically, things were rather better, although conductor Fraser Goulding, whose 14-member band played cut-down orchestrations, too often opted for a rigid thrust that hassled his singers and forced them to round out their set-pieces over-abruptly.
Nevertheless, there were many instances of genuine musical frisson; the finale of the convent scene was particularly gripping. As the much put-upon heroine Leonora, English soprano Sarah Estill proved to be a true Verdi spinto. To a consistently good line she added firm high notes, reasonable flexibility and an acceptable trill.
Scottish mezzo Fiona MacDonald was an energetic if too youthful Azucena, the gypsy who gets to chew the scenery. In spite of a tendency to sharpen under pressure, her intensity of expression carried the day. Her account of how she threw her infant into the flames was especially hair-raising.
Irakli Grigali, the Manrico, is a big man with an enormous voice. I'm sure this stentorian Georgian tenor wows them in large opera houses and outdoor arenas; but in the bright acoustic of the relatively intimate Mahony Hall, his unremitting loudness was aurally wearying. His negotiation of the quicker music was clumsy, and his intonation left a lot to be desired.
Brazilian-born Mario Solimene brought a commanding stage presence and a burnished baritone to the role of the villainous Count of Luna. He, too, had a few tuning problems, but overall he was mightily impressive. As Luna's henchman Ferrando, Singapore bass Martin Ng was constricted in tone and altogether too lightweight.
The small chorus sang energetically throughout, but the men were given some risible miming actions.
John Allen
Madama Butterfly: Lyric Opera
National Concert Hall
The success of Madama Butterfly depends on a confident protagonist and theatre-wise conductor. Lyric Opera's production at the NCH has both. Fergus Sheil, using reduced orchestrations, maintains a good balance between orchestra and singers. His pacing of the action is assured and he uses Puccini's important pauses tellingly.
Korean soprano Jee Hyun Lim is the epitome of the Puccinian "little woman". Her Cio-Cio-San is entirely credible as both naive child-bride and deserted but defiant wife and mother; and her movements, as you would expect, are convincingly oriental. Her silvery middle voice rises to a commanding top and she traverses Puccini's high arching phrases with ease.
Marcello Bedoni is equally believable as the callous Pinkerton. The Italian's medium-weight lyric tenor tightens under pressure and is occasionally eclipsed by the stronger voices around him. But he sings expressively and he exuded the requisite impatient lust in the first-act love duet.
The role of the Consul is robustly sung and acted by Australian baritone Simon Thorpe, and Derry-born Doreen Curran is a perfect Suzuki whose smooth mezzo blends effectively with the soprano in their flower duet. There is a strong supporting team in the character roles, notably Eugene O'Hagen as a slimy marriage-broker and John Molloy as a fanatically-ranting Bonze.
Working on a minimalist set in unfussy lighting by Derek O'Neill, Vivian Coates stages the action with good attention to character interaction and much use of attractive groupings. It's well worth a visit.
Also Tues and Thurs, 7.30pm
John Allen
