Reviews

Irish Times writers review Bob Geldof at Vicar Street, Dublin, the Callino String Quartet at the Printing House in Trinity College, Dublin, and The Snow Queen at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.

Bob Geldof

Vicar Street, Dublin

Kevin Courtney

Earlier this year, Sir Bob stood onstage in front of 200,000 people at Live 8 in London's Hyde Park; tonight he's standing in front of a few hundred people in Vicar Street, including his own family, and it's more nerve-wracking than heading up the year's biggest rock music event. Geldof can get world leaders to listen to his pleas to make poverty history, but it seems that getting people to listen to his music is proving an altogether tougher task. It has been almost 20 years since his debut album, Deep in the Heart of Nowhere, went nowhere, but Bob is still determined to scratch away at his back catalogue in the hope that someone, somewhere sees the diamond glistening beneath the earthy surface.

Tonight, he's on a break from "saving the entire f***ing universe", and dipping into his back pages in the comfortable knowledge that he's in full control of the evening's events. Earlier this year, the Boomtown Rats albums were reissued, some appearing on CD for the first time; just recently, Geldof gathered his four solo albums into one boxed set, adding in a few unreleased extras. He's in a mood to perform a few of his more obscure tunes - "boringly for you," he warns the crowd - but promises to reward the patient listener with some Rats classics later on.

Bob's band features fellow former Rat Pete Briquette, along with violinist Bob Loveday, keyboard/accordion player Alan Dunn, drummer Niall Power and guitarist Johnny Turnbull. Their rootsy style helps bring a bit of consistency to Geldof's solo work, dissipating the musty 1980s aroma of Beat of the Night, and warming up tunes that have been lying in cold storage for years. One of them, Harvest Moon, almost shines. The whole band steps outside the comfort zone for a triptych of harrowing, cathartic tunes from 2001's Sex, Age and Death: Scream in Vain, Mudslide and My Birthday Suit. Having suitably bared his soul, Geldof lets fly with an excellent I Don't Like Mondays, then flies hurriedly through Someone's Looking at You, Mary of the Fourth Form and Rat Trap. Yes, we've been caught in Geldof's emotional rat trap again, but at least the man is a genial enough captor.

Callino String Quartet

Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin

Martin Adams

György Kurtág - Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánsky. Jennifer Walshe - Minard/Nithsdale. Siobhán Cleary - Carrowkeel. Henri Dutilleux - Ainsi la nuit

An excellent programme and superlative playing marked the first concert promoted by Ireland Promoting New Music. IPNM is the brainchild of composer Siobhán Cleary, who devised the programme.

All four pieces were by living composers, are concentrated, multi-sectional works, and are shorter than 16 minutes. In the 15 sections of Kurtág's Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánsky everything counts. From Webernesque canons at medium tempo to long-and-still notes of pin-dropping quietness, this is mesmerising stuff.

So is Jennifer Walshe's Minard/Nithsdale. There is something disconcerting yet distinctive about Walshe's thinking. The quartet plays with strips of cardboard threaded through the strings, the players have an extended bout of tongue-clicking, and all this involves exchanges with pre-recorded sound. This is one of those works that makes you wonder whether you've heard anything quite like it before.

After that, the warm sounds that open Cleary's Carrowkeel sounded surprisingly traditional. But this piece quickly made its own mark. Its sense of craft is strong, it has ideas, and the rhythmic and harmonic energy are striking.

Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit was an excellent counterpart to the Kurtág. Where the Hungarian composer is terse, the French is florid yet concentrated. The seven short, superbly crafted sections play with one's perception of relationships. What you thought was one thing turns out to be something else that you heard earlier - or is it? It was a pity the audience was so small. However, I left this concert with two dominant impressions - the choice of music was excellent, and the unalloyed musicality of the Callino Quartet's playing was as good as you are likely to hear anywhere. Not for one second did they just play the notes. Everything had expressive purpose, and at all times you felt that this was exactly how the music should go.

The Snow Queen

Lyric Theatre, Belfast

Jane Coyle

The Lyric's bicentenary tribute to Hans Christian Andersen draws deep on the folklore of the writer's native land, via Gary McCann's enchanting set, which evokes the intricate white paper cut-outs and folk art motifs that are such an integral element of the Danish design tradition. Combined with Pat Musgrave's vivid costumes and Sinead McKenna's frosty lighting, Richard Croxford's production is a real feast for the eye, capturing the land of snowstorms and icicles and shattered glass where lurks the evil Snow Queen (a plummy Brenda Brooks, in fine singing voice).

The storyline, wittily adapted for the stage by Croxford, moves between that frozen world and the sunny village where two carefree children Kai (Gerard McCarthy) and Gerda (Lisa Duffy) play and squabble and run rings around each other - until the fateful day, when a shard of glass from the Snow Queen's mirror pierces Kai's heart and pollutes everything he once saw as good and wholesome.

With the spirited Gerda and a company of marvellous characters - splendidly played by the versatile Jo Donnelly, Mary Moulds and Glen Wallace - we set out on a journey across rivers and snowdrifts, running the gauntlet of a band of brigands, a couple of friendly ravens, a wise old woman and a reindeer called Elvis, all to the accompaniment of Conor Mitchell's contemporary original score.

The story is clearly told as the clock ticks on Gerda's determination to rescue Kai before the Snow Queen's frozen kisses turn him to a statue of ice. The production manages to retain the attention of its young audience throughout its 90 minutes duration, but, for all its many fine qualities, there are moments when story and music do not quite gel, the atmosphere falls a little flat and the rough magic fails to send shivers down the spine.

Until Jan 7