Reviews

John Allen went to the NCH to see Englebert Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel, which he describes as a gem of an opera. Douglas Sealy was at the IMMA for Crash Ensemble, while Joe Breen headed to Vicar Street to check out The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Hansel and Gretel/Lyric Opera, National Concert Hall

Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel is a gem of an opera, a happy amalgam of early-19th-century German romanticism and post-Wagnerian orchestral colouring.

Even in Tony Burke's reduced orchestration, the score is a thing of joy, especially when conducted with the affectionate verve it got from David Jones in Lyric Opera's presentation at the NCH on Thursday.

Director Vivian Coates opted to shun the opera's darker side and stage the work as jolly pantomime. This was much appreciated by the many very young children in the audience, who lapped up the high-camp witch, the kitschy angels, and a wand-weaving dew fairy in a tutu. They would have enjoyed it even more if they had been able to hear any of the words.

Because, although the opera was given in David Pountney's English translation, very little of it came across clearly, at least to the mid-stalls.

Imelda Drumm's galumphing Hansel and Sinead Pratschke's doll-like Gretel offered a visually credible and musically creditable pair of eponymous siblings. Pratschke's soubrettish soprano didn't always blend with Drumm's warmer-toned mezzo, but that was a small flaw in a feast of pleasurable singing. Mezzo-soprano Pippa Longworth, who also doubled as the Mother, yelped joyously as the multi-coloured witch; but she was vocally strident and dynamically uneven in both roles.

There was more lyrical singing from Hector Guedes as the baritone Father and from Sandra Oman as the Sandman and the Dew Fairy.

The closing scene of the opera, where the gingerbread children regain their human form, was enhanced by the singing of the choirboys of the John Dexter Harmony. - John Allen

Crash Ensemble, IMMA, Dublin

Etudes de bruits (1948) Schaefer; Etude, Op 1/5 (1952) Karlheinz Stockhausen; Mescalin Mix (1960-62) Terry Riley; Come Out (1966) Steve Reich; Sud (1985) Jean-Claude Risset; Presque rien avec filles (1989) Luc Ferrari; Blips and Static (1970) Donnacha Dennehy

In the concert at IMMA on Sunday of last week the artistic director of Crash Ensemble, Donnacha Dennehy, presented a selection of tapes designed to show how electronic music has developed from the early experiments of Pierre Schaefer in 1948 to the more confident sound montages of Donnacha Dennehy in 2002.

This music, originally called musique concrete, is an amalgam of sounds picked up in the environment, both natural and mechanical.

One hears, for example, steam engines, motor-cars, bells, birdsong, water splashing, people talking, whispering, crying, and a variety of booms, bangs and whizzings of dubious origin.

Dennehy's Blips and Static is made of those irritating background noises, mostly electrical, which are the bane of today's technological society, and he recombines these sounds with obvious pleasure, although he doesn't make them any more tolerable.

Risset in Sud and Ferrari in Presque rien avec filles are easier on the ear because they have chosen the sounds of nature for the most part; indeed, the star performer of Ferrari's piece is a nightingale whose song does not seem to have been manipulated in any way, unlike many of the other sounds.

Reich's Come Out is an experiment in the resynchronisation of rhythms as a sentence is declaimed in a kind of canonic overlap and Riley's Mescalin Mix is like a grim soundscape of a bad trip.

It is chastening to realise that most of these composers are in their 60s or 70s (Schaefer is dead and Dennehy is the only young Turk) and that this music is still looking for a place in the sun. - Douglas Sealy

The Blind Boys of Alabama, Vicar Street

It might seem churlish if not downright meanspirited to criticise a bunch of elderly citizens doing the work of the Lord. But the sun does not shine always on his messengers; at least that was the evidence last Thursday of the second of two sold-out shows at Dublin's Vicar Street by the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Perhaps they were understandably tired from their labours of the previous night, when they reportedly triumphed, but there was something of a leaden weariness to their performance, compared to this writer's experience of their exultant Gospel at the same venue over a year ago.

Though spiritual in intent, there is a rockiness at the heart of this venerable group. It is a risky road to follow - where the intensity of Gospel can be diluted by the demands of showbusiness. Unfortunately, on this night, the balance was firmly in favour of the secular, though lip-service was paid to their inspiration. Many of the songs were taken from their current album, Higher Ground, which has given them, in the late autumn of their years, probably greater success than at any time during the last 60-odd years of their association.

And, of course, they deserve it all. When they combine so naturally to create those celestial harmonies for which they are famous, it is a wondrous sound to behold, even if the voices increasingly tremble. The pity on Thursday was that they didn't do it more and leave the devil's music to him and his own. - Joe Breen