Irish Times writers review the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Motorhead at Extreme 2002 and Maura O'Connell at An Grianán, Letterkenny.
WEST CORK CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Of the seven works featured in Tuesday's concerts at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival are concert rarities. Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concert of 1741 are among the finest works in the tradition of harpsichord solos with instrumental accompaniment. Malcolm Proud (harpsichord), with Wilbert Hazelzet (flute), Maya Homburger (violin) and Sarah Cunningham (bass viol), offered all five of the inventive suites which make up this work, Proud's flinty sureness providing a core to the music-making that was both solid and quietly flamboyant
The Moscow-born composer Paul Juon (1872-1940), who spent most of his working life in Berlin, is, in the view of the Altenberg Trio's pianist, Claus-Christian Schuster, "the most unknown of the significant composers of his time". I'm not sure that Litaniae for piano trio is the work to assess this statement by. The music suggests a composer who, in reflecting the stylistic diversity of the age he lived in, wanted to have his cake and eat it. And the uneven success of the styles within the piece suggests that he was a lot more tied to the past than he wanted to acknowledge.
Paul Hindemith's Des Todes Tod (Death's Death) of 1922 is an oddity of far greater interest. These settings of poems by Eduard Reinacher for mezzo soprano, two violas and two cellos, strike a consistently eerie atmosphere and were delivered with strong narrative presence by Cornelia Kallisch with James Boyd, Diana Crafoord, Natalie Clein and Lisa Fagius.
The chamber music of Alexander Glazunov is now generally neglected. And Tuesday's performance of his String Quintet in A, Op 39, left one in no doubt as to why. Glazunov was master of most of what a composer needed to know, and he rarely found cause to let vacuity of imagination or poverty of content impede the fluency of his technique when it came to filling up the pages of new works. In the performance by the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet with cellist Colin Carr, both Carr and viola-player Simon Aspell made the most of the melodic opportunities. But trying to listen to the piece was like expecting nourishment from eating the wax fruit display out of a shop window.
The day's final work, Brahms's Clarinet Quintet, played by Romain Guyot with the Artis Quartet, couldn't have made the point more clearly. Like the Glazunov, it dates from the early 1890s. But not a moment is redundant or empty. The performance had that sort of lucidity which brings the listener fully inside the music, presenting its every detail in absolutely true perspective, and sounding at once contemplative and totally involving.
Earlier in the day, the Altenberg Trio had attempted a sort of deconstruction on Dvorak's daunting F minor Trio, which, had it been successful, would have had a similar effect.
Sadly, it didn't work out, and Dvorak was represented as a neurotic ranter, alternately roaring and shivering, always clamouring to be different, and hardly granted the benefit of common sense.
Michael Dervan
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MOTORHEAD
EXTREME 2002
There are two types of metal fan - the ones who mean it and the ones for whom wearing the paraphernalia is a retreat from the grind of the 9-5 week. While the former wilfully paint themselves into a social corner and all that that entails (and why ever not, etc), the latter appear to have a more lateral, if somewhat peripheral, pseudo approach.
You can see the disdain, though, by which the latter are viewed by the former: it was all around the RDS on Saturday, this division - benign and heavy-lidded though it might have been.
While support metal bands such as Spunge, Soil, Raging Speedhorn, No Means No and One Minute Silence play rampantly soulless music as unequivocal as their names, the tatty stalls (Irish metal CDs, tattoo parlour), the genital-stretching freakshow mini-stage (don't try this at home, kids) and the Extreme Cinema (do The Wicker Man and Spinal Tap really qualify?) act as between-the-band sideshows. For such a long day (the event began before noon), it's hardly stretching the imagination.
But it's Motorhead that pretty much everyone has come to see - 57-year-old Lemmy and his mates, their iconic status in the metal pack well and truly intact by virtue of their longevity, their uncompromising musical stance and a bunch of songs that are recognised staples of the genre.
As crucial to the development of contemporary metal as The Ramones were to punk, Motorhead expertly pummel their way through some terrific songs: metal classics Shoot You In The Back, Ace Of Spades, Motorhead, Bomber, Love For Sale - all assembled in an effortless, seamless join of riffs, rhythm, melody, guitar solos and part-growl, part-shout vocals.
Tony Clayton-Lea
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MAURA O'CONNELL
AN GRIANAN, LETTERKENNY
By the pre-show buzz on a summer's evening in downtown Letterkenny, Maura O'Connell's status as national musical treasure remains utterly secure.
Touring her first record in five years, the warmly-received Walls And Windows, this Ennis woman turned Nashville player remains as savvy as ever when it comes to her songwriters: Ron Sexsmith's Don't Ask Why and Patty Griffin's Poor Man's House, both Walls And Windows highlights, shine brightly in their live incarnations. One is reminded of the smart choices O'Connell has made over the years - from Paul Brady's To Be The One to Andy Irvine's West Coast Of Clare, from Richard Thompson's The Drunkard's Roll to John Prine's Sleepy Eyed Boy, she's interpreted tunes by the best and made them her own.
When she returns for an encore of The Water Is Wide, the effect is electrifying (despite the best efforts of an intrusive mobile phone, the bane of the 21st-century theatrical experience, from the stalls).
Derek O'Connor
