Reviews

Irish Times writers review the latest concerts and shows.

Composers' Choice:

Kevin Volans

NCH John Field Room, Dublin

Kevin Volans - 3 Piano Études; Akrodha. Stockhausen - Kontakte.

Kevin Volans's Composers' Choice concert stood apart from the others in this year's series in a number of ways. He offered just three works, two by himself, one by one of his teachers, Karlheinz Stockhausen, bypassing the wider obligations of representation that other composers seem to have felt.

His pre-concert talk made this all the clearer when he declared that Morton Feldman was the greatest influence on his composing over the last two decades. Stockhausen's Kontakte of 1960 was included because it's "a fantastically wonderful piece," one of the few of the composer's works he regards as sounding "as fresh as when it was written".

Volans is a gifted speaker, lucid, factually rich, philosophically probing, although he fights shy of talking about his own music. He's wary of "naming" in relation to music, even to the point of having what seems like a fear of finding names for his own pieces. And he draws attention, rightly, to the fact that some of the most important aspects of music are rarely touched on.

In Stockhausen's case - and he really only cares for the works pre-1972 - he instanced his gift for harmony and striking imagery, things that Stockhausen never talks about.

Volans, whose studies under Stockhausen were successful enough for him to become a teaching assistant, has abandoned his German training for a Feldmanesque approach. He tries to compose without preconceptions, allowing the material to develop itself and define the form.

His three Piano Études, were performed with sensitive insight, both musical and pianistic, by Fredrik Ullén. The first opens with a modern-day version of the three-hand illusion that Horowitz was so fond of in his arrangements. The ploy is typical of Volans's approach in these pieces, familiar elements and gestures surfacing in contexts new and unfamiliar, moments that might pass in a flash put under the microscope for repeated inspection. Ullén's performance made them constantly gripping.

The two movements of Akrodha for percussion, one for drums, the other for a range of mostly metallic sound sources, sounded by comparison more conventional, the display of the first focusing attention firmly on Axelsson's virtuosity, and considerably outshining the restraint of the second.

Kontakte for percussionist, percussion-playing pianist and four-track tape is a classic of its kind, a landmark piece in which the hard-edged idiom of the time is softened by the morphing with the electronic sounds, and the electronic world itself manages feats of integration that have only rarely been rivalled. The performance had its moments of rough co-ordination, but still had a strength to leave one in no doubt as to why Stockhausen seemed such a defining figure in the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s.

Fredrik Ullén and Jonny Axelsson perform in the Hugh Lane Gallery's Sundays at Noon series next Sunday.

Michael Dervan

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Sexual Perversity in Chicago

New Theatre, Temple Bar

Chicago-born David Mamet's early short plays, from the 1970s, are so rarely seen now that they should be classified as collector's items. Here was born that commitment to language as spoken on the streets and in the bedrooms, with the author's creative add-ons; and here also was a new look at human frailty and its psychological consequences.

This 90-minute work is as good an example as any of that explosive talent in full spate. Two men friends share their views on women. Bernie, the older, is very experienced sexually and, although he won't admit it, deeply disillusioned. He propositions any women he fancies, and is deeply offended if his offer is refused. That strikes at the very heart of his distorted ego. Danny is still open to romance, but sex is the driving force.

There are also two women. Deborah shares a flat with Joan, a neurotic who now hates men. When Deborah meets Danny they fall in love, and she moves in with him. The other two are utterly cynical about the romance, and they are right. In a short while, when the joys of sex have become routine, the lovers fall out bitterly, and she returns to her friend. The two men take to sunning themselves on the beach, making lascivious remarks about the parade of female flesh they have come to watch.

There is little, apart from an occasional remark, of what would pass for perversity today, except in the dictionary definition of something other than what is reasonable or required. But that distortion is precisely what the author puts before us; old-fashioned morality with a modern difference.

This is the inaugural show from the Icarus company, with Ben Lay (also director), Cillian Roche, Olga Wehrly and Barbara Dempsey in committed performances.

Better lighting facilities, imaginatively used, might have helped to improve the pace of the series of staccato scenes; but this is still a worthwhile production from a welcome new arrival.

Runs to April 17th

Gerry Colgan