Reviews

Irish Times writers review the Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival and Walking Vermont, by Eamon Colman at the Vanguard Gallery, Cork.

Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival

The expectation of a specialised music festival is that it will open audiences to musical experiences not normally available to them. That's certainly what the Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival, now under the artistic direction of Mark Duley, did on its opening days.

The high point was Saturday's appearance by the New London Chamber Choir under James Wood in the splendidly refurbished surroundings of St Nicholas of Myra Church in Francis Street. This choir, which has a reputation second to none in the field of contemporary music, gives that rarest of impressions in the world of choral singing - of being a group of musicians first and foremost, always attempting to accommodate voice to music rather than the other way around.

Their programme ranged from Brahms (the Lieder, Op. 104) and Schoenberg (Friede auf Erden) to the present day. The intense chromaticism of the Schoenberg was handled with the same assurance and expressive point as the Brahms. The later works on the programme were performed with a similar sense of perfectionist zeal -David Sawer's new Stramm Gedichte, illustrative, often fractured settings of war-inspired poems by August Stramm (1874-1915), Claude Vivier's O Kosmos of 1973, strangely disparate invocations by this important, still under-valued Canadian composer, Jonathan Harvey's plainchant-haunted Come Holy Ghost of 1984, and Luca Francesconi's Let me Bleed, a "quasi Requiem" for Carlo Giuliani, killed by Italian police in protests in Genoa last year, full of pained, protesting lines, keening in narrow intervals.

The acoustic captured with clarity and resonance the remarkable performances of what is one of the finest choirs active today. The festival's opening concert, at St Patrick's Cathedral on Friday, offered what is, in Irish terms, an equally unusual programme, with the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and the DIOCF Festival Chorus joining forces with the National Symphony Orchestra under Vernon Handley for an all-English programme: Herbert Howells's magnum opus, Hymnus Paradisi, preceded by Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis (which greatly impressed the 17-year-old Howells at its 1910 première) and Delius's Sea Drift, a setting of Whitman premièred in Essen in 1906, and generally considered the composer's finest work.

Vernon Handley is among the leading interpreters of 20th-century English music, and his loving care was evident in Friday's performances. None of the evening's three soloists (baritone Stephen Roberts in the Delius, soprano Franzita Whelan and tenor John Mark Ainsley in the Howells) really managed to get past the difficulties of the cathedral's acoustic, though the choral sound carried altogether more effectively.

Delius and Howells have remained largely English enthusiasms, their particular poetic gesturesembedded in large and loose forms that, in the case of Delius, were once memorably summed up as "unseizable". It was good to hear these deeply-felt works Hymnus Paradisi was inspired by the loss of the composer's nine-year-old son to polio) in such sympathetic readings.

Saturday's other event, a lunchtime concert built around the music of Schütz by the Goethe Institute Choir under John Dexter at Adam & Eve's Franciscan Church, Merchant's Quay, was a frustrating occasion.

Choral music doesn't come much clearer in chordal or rhythmic character than this. But Saturday's performances lacked the necessary firmness of movement and sureness of pitch. Colette Boushell's chaste performance of Dexter's Magnificat for solo soprano constituted this concert's brightest spot.

Michael Dervan

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Walking Vermont, by Eamon Colman

The Vangard Gallery, Cork

The close relationship between the act of looking and the act of visually recording is traditionally considered to be a vital part of the creative impetus for many artists. For Eamon Colman looking is important, but he is not interested in replicating details of what he sees, rather building upon the memories and impressions formed while walking through a landscape.

The most obvious way in which Colman removes himself from the process of objective representation is his use of exaggerated colour. This approach has remained constant regardless of location: Ireland, continental Europe or North America. This means colours do not necessarily have a geographical association, but rather, are explored in purely Epicurean terms with warm vibrant hues matching the passion of the turbulent surfaces. The vibrancy of colour gives the feeling that these paintings are lit from within - not unlike a light box or stained glass window.

The compositions which Colman establishes are as unrestrained as the colour, with paint applied in dramatic sweeps which often sit on the picture plane. This creates a barrier into the centre of the painting and proffers a surrealistic effect, as trees, distant hills, fruit and vessel shapes appear to float or shift relative to each other. But this impression is not fixed in stone, as surprisingly within the apparent chaos, it is still possible to impose order. In the painting, Down on Swamp Road the Frogs Sing, the space between the foreground trees and the poplars in the distance is quite convincing and the confidence in expressing their presence in such an economical way is a marvel.

Mark Ewart

Runs until 6th July