Reviews

Irish Times writers review  the Shannon International Music Festival, the Beta Band's concert in the Temple Bar Music Centre and a recital of ballads at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre in Dublin.

Labelle, Irish Chamber Orchestra/McGegan

Shannon International Music Festival, Limerick

Purcell - Indian Queen Suite. Britten - Les Illuminations. Peter Sculthorpe - Port Essington. Rameau - Les Indes Galantes Suite

Nicholas McGegan programmed the Irish Chamber Orchestra's opening concert at Shannon International Music Festival as a kind of musical travelogue.

The festival itself has travelled. The former Killaloe Music Festival has moved to St Mary's cathedral in Limerick and acquired a new sponsor, MBNA Ireland.

The programme took the listener through imaginings of the Americas in cut-down suites from two baroque stage works (Peru and Mexico in Purcell's The Indian Queen, the Huron Indians in Rameau's Les Indes Galantes) to a European-Australian clash in Peter Sculthorpe's Port Essington.

McGegan is, of course, an experienced baroque musician who has successfully branched out into later repertoire. The opening Purcell suite, however, was surprisingly low key, lacklustre even, with surprising failures of unanimity within the orchestra adding to the impression that all was not well with the music making.

The approach in the Rimbaud settings of Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations was sharper in focus, and the playing was cleaner in detail. The Canadian soprano Dominique Labelle was in glorious voice, radiant, free, at times singing with an almost supercharged energy.

McGegan's accompaniments gave her all the space she required, creating quite the opposite effect of the last two performances of this piece I've heard from this orchestra, in which the inimitable resourcefulness of Britten's string writing was allowed to dominate the vocal contribution.

Sculthorpe, who is now in his mid-70s, is an Australian composer who likes to deal with Australian material. In Port Essington (1977) he fabricates both a music of the bush and a 19th-century drawing-room music to suggest the factual conflict between settlers and their surroundings, in attempted settlements of Port Essington more than 150 years ago. Looked at another way, the piece featured many of the techniques of the post-war avant-garde, put to effective illustrative use within what the composer also conceived of as a double set of variations.

The concert ended on a much firmer note than it began. Even with what you might have expected to be essential instruments left out of the equation (the orchestra fielded a line-up of strings, oboes and a bassoon for this concert) the imaginative cut and thrust of Rameau clearly generated a lot more heat in performance than had the quirkier gestures by Purcell at the evening's start.

Michael Dervan

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The Beta Band

Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin

For us Nick Hornby types a visit from the Scottish cult band is cause for celebration, so we've taken a break from rearranging our record collections and come down to Temple Bar Music Centre to witness our super indie heroes in action. They've got a new album, Heroes To Zeroes, which has received mixed reviews, but we know The Beta Band really shine in a live setting, so we're looking forward to a psychedelic highland fling down Temple Bar way.

There was a time when The Beta Band were the name to drop in cool indie circles, but even though John Cusack plugged them in High Fidelity they never went stellar - and have, in fact, since faded into mere space oddities. Still, when the foursome arrive onstage, looking like astronauts from Oasis, there's an ecstatic cheer from the crowd. From here on in anything can happen; I guess that was always The Beta Band's appeal: they carried around a sackful of possibilities wherever they went.

Tonight the air is hot and sticky, and halfway through the gig the band have to shed their space-age cagoules - all except keyboard player John Maclean, who keeps his white technician's jumpsuit on, determined to see this latest experiment through to the sweaty end. This is folksy, futuristic tribal rock, built on shuffling dance beats and Robin Jones's flailing 1960s drums, topped by singer-guitarist Steve Mason's crumbly, McVitie's voice and accompanied by all manner of musical accoutrements, including bells, harmonicas, cowbells, vibraslaps and a king-sized tambourine. During the set the quartet swop instruments, Mason joining Jones on the drums and Greentree taking over on lead vocals.

Squares samples their old tune Daydream In Blue but takes it from the lounge down into the abyss; Al Sharp's harmonies are a bit flat, but when the band sort the venue's sound out it all coagulates nicely. They unearth She's The One, Push It Out and Inner Meet Me, guaranteeing that indie record shops in the vicinity will sell all their copies of The Three EPs. Tracks from the new album, such as Troubles and Out-Side, acquit themselves well, even if they sometimes cross the forbidden prog-line.

Quiet, from the Hot Shots album, climaxes with a trippy extended instrumental part straight out of London's UFO club circa 1967.

And so back to our record collections. I'm filing tonight's show under B for Beta than expected.

Kevin Courtney

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Davis Maguire (tenor), Owen C Lynch (baritone), Deborah Kelleher (piano)

Bank of Ireland, Dublin

Victorian balladry was the fare on offer on College Green at lunchtime on Wednesday, when three artists performed some 35 minutes of well-loved ditties by the likes of Coates, Tate and Molloy as if to the parlour born.

Eight of the items were sung as duets, although, apart from the opening excerpt from The Gondoliers they didn't start life that way. Rather, they were popular solo songs, pieces such as 'Somewhere a voice is calling' and 'Silent worship', that had been arranged for two voices.

Mostly, they were launched by the baritone, taken over by the tenor as the melody climbed the stave, then continued by both singers in tight harmony, generally with the lower voice carrying the melody while the upper one provided a descant.

Unfortunately, these descants were delivered in a strong head voice cum falsetto that sometimes obliterated the main tune, especially in the softer numbers.

The voices were better balanced in extrovert songs such as 'Bless this house' and 'Song of songs'.

There were only two solo offerings. Balfe's 'Come into the garden, Maud' was sung by tenor David Maguire with admirable earnestness. Here and elsewhere he exploited his clear diction, sweet middle register and occasional use of head voice effectively. But he overindulged in falsetto and his loud high notes were consistently caught in the throat.

Baritone Owen C. Lynch sang a debonair 'On the road to Mandalay'. Like the tenor, he articulated his words clearly, but his tone, a rounded one with a warm top, was more consistently even and his vocal personality more pronounced.

Both singers' efforts were enhanced by the support of pianist Deborah Kelleher, who was, as ever, an inspiring partner throughout.

John Allen