Reviews

Irish Times writes give their verdicts.

Mary Coughlan and Friends Spirit, Dublin

Peter Crawley

Unlike the surface sheen of pop and rock, or the high theatrics of cabaret, the blues demand something unique from a singer - namely, credentials. It wouldn't have been enough for Billie Holiday to have simply sung Good Morning Heartache. First, she had to live it.

Carrying the flame for 20 years now, Galway torch singer Mary Coughlan doesn't need to remind us how she earned her stripes. Her marriage crumbled; she was ripped off by her management; she lost her home, her record contract and - for a time - her struggle with the bottle. She has spent more than her fair share of time in hospital and, most harrowingly, in RTÉ's Celebrity Farm. Astonishingly, she has survived to tell the tale.

On stage Coughlan exudes the cautious warmth of the emotionally calloused, but you can still descry a sensitive soul beneath her sardonic tones. Those rounded, low-riding vowels trail caustic accents through the despondent Double Cross: "I wake up in the morning," growls Coughlan, "and drag my make-up on." Rasping over the seedy vamp of James Bailey's piano on Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse, or following a Shirley Bassey soar through Ice Cream Man, Coughlan thanks us for choosing her over the Olympics.

Given our dismal showing in Athens, we've clearly picked the right torch. At this time of national melancholy, Coughlan's gloom offers uplifting commiseration, and her laconic pride lies in deciding whether Billie's Blues or Leaf From a Tree is "the most miserable song I do". It's not a show to see alone (misery loves company), but Coughlan's coup is to combine regret and hope through her last ringing words: "I'm sorry," she sings with Dietrichian implacability, "but I'm glad to be alive."

Runs until August 28th

Artur Pizarro

Elmwood Hall, Belfast

Dermot Gault

Albéniz - Navarra. Granados - Escenas Románticas. Rodrigo - A l'ombre de Torre Bermeja. Nín - Tres Danzas Españolas. Longas - Aragón

Sviatoslav Richter surveyed almost the entire piano repertory but avoided Spanish music because, he said, he "found nothing" there. To a certain extent the player of this music finds there what he puts there - at least in terms of emotional depth, as conjured up by the range of expressive nuance the player can coax from the instrument. This is especially true of an elusive work such as the Granados Escenas Románticas.

Granados believed that his music embodied a Spanish spirit and did not need to exhibit folkloric characteristics. This cycle of six pieces is slow and quiet for the most part (arguably there's too much slow and quiet music) but in the hands of a player like Artur Pizarro, who can join concentration to delicacy and imagination, it can communicate a wealth of feeling.

Isaac Albéniz is credited with making bravura pianism the main vehicle for the Spanish Nationalist School. Pieces such as his Navarra, a late work completed after his death by Deodat de Séverac, and the Nídances, which add a sharper 20th-century edge, are grist to Pizarro's virtuosic mill. The Rodrigo is more energetic and acerbic than some of this composer's other work, and there are some beguiling sonorities at the end. The winner, however, was the Aragón by Federico Longas, who died in 1968. Apart from the fact that he wrote a few other piano pieces, it seems that nothing is known about him.

The Pantomima from Falla's El amor brujo made an apt encore.