Reviews

Irish Times writers review Pyrenees at the Project Upstairs, Douglas, Pittsburgh SO/ Slatkin at the National Concert Hall, and Tristan Russcher, organ at the National Concert Hall.

Pyrenees

Project Upstairs, Dublin

Gerry Colgan

When mystery play meets psychological drama, the outcome has a good chance of being at least entertaining. That is certainly the case in David Greig's Pyrenees, which begins with the situation of a man who has been discovered unconscious in the mountains. He is amnesiac, and is being questioned by Anna, a young woman from the British consulate.

Anna is epileptic, and her experiences with men have been a turn-off. She is intrigued by the case before her, and her emotional immaturity meets his inchoate advances at least half-way. Before they can embark on an affair, an older woman turns up claiming to be his wife. The man denies any possibility that this might be true, and the plot thickens.

It soon thins again when it becomes clear not only that the woman is telling the truth, but that her story owes more to plot manipulation than to credible narrative. She has been following her husband, who feigned his own death and went on the run, across Europe. His odysseys and affairs, including an interlude with Norwegian Hell's Angels, are incompatible with his character and background, and with the notion of a wife in hot pursuit.

It ends with the mystery concluded rather than solved. Anna has a fit and an unprofessional lapse, and the married couple resume an opaque relationship. But if the plot has tin-potty elements, the actors rise to the challenge with talented zeal.

Mark Lambert is a fascinating study as the man, Ger Ryan has authority as his wife, and Karen Ardiff conquers the difficult role of Anna. Ronan Leahy plays a hotel proprietor with an insider's command of the eccentric, a brilliant performance.

The excellence of the cast, directed by an in-form Annabelle Comyn, makes the evening a rewarding experience.

Until Sept 9

Douglas, Pittsburgh SO/ Slatkin

National Concert Hall, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Ives - Symphony No 2. Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue. Bernstein - Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

The first of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's two programmes opening the new International Orchestral Series at the National Concert Hall was an all-American affair.

It was also an evening of works which embraced popular tunes and idioms.

Conductor Leonard Slatkin (standing in for the orchestra's indisposed artistic adviser, Andrew Davis) seemed to take this as the cue for a frequently in-your-face style of delivery.

The effect was at its mildest in the opening work, Charles Ives's mostly gentle and genial Second Symphony, where Brahms, Bach and Wagner make momentary, ghost-like appearances as well as folksy material and The Camptown Races.

Slatkin tended to milk the melodic writing for rather more in the way of expression than it could comfortably yield. But he relaxed for the central Adagio cantabile, and he handled the notorious ending - a wrong-footing, dissonant chord - with an effective touch, light and short.

The mix of classical and popular idioms in George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is not an easy one to bring off. Slatkin and his players let their hair down to the point where the soloist Barry Douglas was often simply blotted out. This was a pity, as Douglas was in engaging, nimble-fingered form.

The Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story rounded off the evening with more over-the-top playing. The score is almost like a thesaurus into which movie and TV composers would dip at will in the 1960s, though without Bernstein's unerringly memorable turn of phrase.

In terms of orchestral playing technique, the Pittsburghers offered a first-rate performance. However, a rather lighter touch and a greater concentration on light and shade would have made this powerfully expressed performance even more impressive in its impact.

Tristan Russcher, organ

National Concert Hall, Dublin

Michael Dungan

Langlais - Fête. Couperin - Offertoire. Bach - Prelude and Fugue in D BWV532. Fauré, arr. Drayton - Après un rêve. Noel Rawsthorne - Hornpipe Humoresque. Iain Farrington - Fiesta!

Australian Tristan Russcher, assistant organist at Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral, offered a mixed programme of church and non-church music for a lunchtime recital.

Whether or not it had anything to do with the secular environment in which he was playing, Russcher was at his best in non-church repertoire. To open, he loosed an energetic charge into the fanfare and high spirits of Jean Langlais's Fête, written to celebrate the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Showing no trace of the slight congestion and even stodginess that had earlier characterised his Bach, he revealed a relish and feel for swing in Iain Farrington's nine-movement Fiesta!, with its jazz, funk and Latin dance influences. And if he didn't summon much romantic feeling in Matthew Drayton's arrangement of Fauré's very romantic chanson Après un rêve, he had no trouble tapping into the pure cheek of Noel Rawsthorne's Hornpipe Humoresque as it glorified the familiar Sailor's Hornpipe with fleeting pastiches of Bach, Vivaldi, Widor and "Rule, Britannia!".

This was the final concert in the NCH's Summer Sounds at Lunchtime series. It did little to alleviate end-of-summer melancholy to see a mere 30 in attendance. This was no fault of young Russcher who has yet to establish a public profile. The NCH might do more, starting with notes in the printed programme to guide both organ buffs and newcomers.

And organists as a species could do worse than consider new ways to connect their vast potential audience with the richness of their repertoire, with the variety and heritage of their instruments, and with the best of their talent.

Without fresh thinking, the typical organ recital will continue to attract a desultory double-digit audience and sustain the organ's bad press in a self-fulfilling prophecy.