Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review The Cripple of Inishmanat Liberty Hall in Dublin as well as a performance by Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruitenat Christ Church and the RTÉCOunder the baton of David Brophy, with soloist Catherine Leonard at the RDS.

Leonard, RTÉCO/Brophy, RDS, Dublin

Rameau - Näis (exc)

Mozart - Violin Concerto No 4. CPE

Bach - Symphony in D Wq183 No 1

Haydn - Symphony No 104 (London)

The RTÉ Concert Orchestra has been having a pretty rotten 21st century. Back in April 2000 it was Bertie Ahern, no less, who announced that the orchestra was to move to the northside and establish a new home in a purpose-built complex at Dublin City University. But the planned residency never materialised. It fell apart even before the building of The Helix had actually been completed.

In September 2003 the orchestra received a fillip through the appointment of a musically stylish new principal conductor, Laurent Wagner. His primary work with the orchestra focused on concert series at The Helix. But the programming was misguided, and in spite of some excellent performances the venture was never really a hit with audiences.

It was abandoned and Wagner parted company with the orchestra last year.

The RTÉCO, still without a home performing base, is now facing a future with a very different conductor, Dubliner David Brophy, whose three-year appointment began last month. Brophy's Catholic musical taste chimes with the orchestra's jack of all trades work pattern.

Already this year, for example, his workload (with and without the RTÉCO) has included Howard Blake's The Snowman, an evening of Gilbert & Sullivan, Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and Bizet's Carmen.

On Wednesday he took the significant step of launching a new three-concert series of 18th-century music with the RTÉCO at the RDS.

The programming is among the most cogent the orchestra has undertaken when trying to strike out in a new direction. Rameau and CPE Bach feature in each programme in the company of the more famous names of Mozart, Haydn and JS Bach.

Brophy's style in the opening programme showed an attentive ear to the dynamic impact the playing would have on his listeners. The delivery was high in energy, and often driven with an edge of violence. At times he seemed to conduct like someone used to the more massive sounds of a symphony orchestra, who was gearing up the volume to compensate for the smaller number of players he found himself confronted with.

The downsides of the approach were most pronounced in the excerpts from Rameau's Nïis and the typically and wonderfully quirky Symphony in D by CPE Bach. At times the effect was of simply too many strands competing for domination, and of pressured speeds which sounded forced.

Haydn's London Symphony responded better to the edgy intensity, and Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto was given a performance which turned out to be rich in high contrasts.

The soloist here was Catherine Leonard. Her playing was tonally-refined and her approach one of stylishly circumspect romanticism, highly personal and detailed in emotional expression, yet mostly so carefully proportioned that she never seemed to be upscaling the music - though she did take parts of the finale at quite a lick. The orchestral playing, by contrast, was bold, rough, almost rustic in manner. - Michael Dervan

Ruiten, Collins, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

The Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten does not just have an outstanding voice, easily capable of the widest range of volume and colour. She makes a song disclose the feeling that inspired the poetry.

The success of this concert, the last of six in a Music Network tour with pianist Finghin Collins, also lay in the programme. Songs by Mozart and Turina's Tres Poemas were the frames for thematic groupings by Schumann, packed with floral imagery; by Strauss on motherhood; Poulenc's cycle La courte paille; and songs by Duparc on death.

Ruiten and Collins were an always-reliable partnership. However, it was sometimes frustrating that the piano was inclined to indistinctness, something that I do not associate with this pianist. Perhaps it was the combination of the instrument and Christ Church Cathedral's acoustic.

Lenneke Ruiten made no attempt to be aurally or visually spectacular. She just became each song in turn; and the ability to get on with that most subtle of tasks was underlined when a few quiet sniffs towards the end revealed that she had a cold.

There's nothing precious in this young woman's temperament or musicianship! The immediate contrasts and stylishness of the Poulenc, the voluptuousness of Duparc's Extase and Élégie, and the intimacy of the Schumann - all those were taken in her stride.

If I had to pick one moment, it would be Strauss's Wiegenlied Op. 41 No 1. I have heard this song's extraordinary, soaring and sustained lines many times, from some excellent singers. But never have I heard it sound with such quiet ecstasy that it seemed breathless. Of course, it wasn't really breathless; but that's the art of song. It was a moment I wished to preserve. I can't. But Ruiten will do it again. - Martin Adams

The Cripple of Inishmaan Liberty Hall, Dublin

East Wall PEG Drama is a community group who have earned their spurs with, as befits a Dublin ensemble, the plays of Seán O'Casey and James Plunkett, presented annually on the professional stage of Liberty Hall. This year they are testing their talents on the unique Martin McDonagh, in one his blackest comedies.

The setting could hardly be further, in distance and in spirit, from the capital. It is set in the Aran Islands in the 1930s, when a famous film about shark-hunting was being filmed by the great American director Robert O'Flaherty on Inishmore. On the smaller island next door, the young Cripple Billy is surrounded with grotesques, people whose handicaps are on the inside. He longs to escape to a new life, perhaps in Hollywood.

Billy has two adoptive aunts who run a small shop, through which there passes a succession of weirdos. Johnny Patteen Mike is the professional island gossip who is trying to kill his mother with drink.

Helen is the only girl around, a virago able to dominate any man in sight. Babby Bobby is a tough fisherman who befriends Billy - for a time. They, and their island companions, are all virtually certifiable.

This production, directed by Dara Carolan, goes for the comic jugular. His cast belie their city origins with credible western accents and, more importantly, persuasive interpretations. Kevin Purdy Croke is the pathetic Billy, lending a note of real tragedy to the outcome. The pixillated aunts are well played by Aisling Moir and Margaret Purdy Croke, and Fran Laycock delivers a strong eccentric as Johnny. Deirdre Hernon's Helen steals the show with a hilarious interpretation, a tide that lifts all boats. - Gerry Colgan

• Runs until March 2nd