Reviews

Douglas Sealy reports on the Vogler Spring Festival 2003. Reviews also from Gerry Colgan and Sioban Long.

Vogler Spring Festival 2003

St Columba's Church, Drumcliffe, Co Sligo

By Douglas Sealy

The monuments of Western art can have the air of museum pieces, petrified under layers of respectability, but in the performances of the Vogler Quartet and its guests they become not only alive but also dangerous. One feels they might kick if one comes too close.

Beethoven's String Quartet Op 135 might seem a safe choice to open the festival, but it was played with a fervour that made it sound as iconoclastic as it must have been when it was new.

And Barry Douglas attacked Schumann's Fantasie in C, Op 17, with the energy of a titan; seldom can the composer's demons have been so menacing, his angels so sweet-tempered, his schizophrenia so marked, but would it have been so obvious so early in his career?

Two days later, Douglas played Debussy's Pour Le Piano in a similarly declamatory style, missing out on the suggestiveness that is one of Debussy's hallmarks.

This was rather surprising, as accompanying Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano) in Mahler's Rückert Lieder and Schumann's Frauenliebe Und Leben he showed that he was capable of all the tender evocativeness these works need.

It was, however, in the more spacious, more grandiloquent works, such as the Franck Piano Quintet in F Minor (with the Vogler) and Brahms's Clarinet Trio Op 114 (with Ronald van Spaendonck, clarinet, and Daniel Müller-Schott, cello) that his inspiration chimed most effectively with that of the composers in the great overlapping swathes of

sound.

Müller-Schott, with Priya Mitchell (violin) and Robert Kulek (piano), was just as powerful in Brahms's Piano Trio No 1 in B, Op 8, a youthful work revised with no loss of youthful generosity 35 years later, and the three of them soared and swooped in a crescendo of mounting excitement.

The late-night concert on Sunday, with the same players, was perhaps the most overwhelming of the festival; it was certainly unforgettable. Müller-Schott played Britten's Cello Suite No 3 with burning intensity, each movement seeming the condensation of a lifetime's experience, a centre of gravity into which the audience was inexorably drawn.

As if this was not enough, it was followed by Mitchell and Kulek in Schnittke's Violin Sonata No 1, a work of astounding emotional vehemence, as raw and tender as an open wound.

It would be an understatement to say they played it; it was a psychic drama in which they were the protagonists, only a step away from a plunge into madness. The piano could sound like a pistol shot, the violin like a scream; the music was an epitome of suffering.

Mitchell and Kulek showed an equal understanding of such a totally different work as Debussy's Sonata for Violin and Piano, where pastel shades are predominant and implication becomes more important than statement.

In the even more muted sound world of Ian Wilson's Spillaert's Beach, where the music rarely rises above a whisper, they achieved a great expressiveness.

The Vogler Quartet, whose presence in Sligo is one of the most heartening manifestations of musical life in Ireland, played Ian Wilson's . . .Wander, Darkling (Quartet No 5), a work that reinvents musical language for its own purposes. Its experimentation with unusual textures is quite absorbing, and it has an air of tentativeness, as if reaching into the dark. More assured was Schulhoff's String Quartet No 1 (1924) the four short movements of which present a kaleidoscopic and possibly ironic

display of the modish influences of the time.

It was in Schoenberg's string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Vogler with Lars Anders Tomter and Müller-Schott) that the players excelled themselves.

Its often dense textures were made clear and its melodic lines were kept taut, so it sounded less like the last faded flower of romanticism than a precursor of a more austere style. It was a bracing intellectual experience.

And last but not least there was Dermot Dunne (accordion) in Gubaidulina's extraordinary De Profundis and in an atmospheric rendering of Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango.

The weather was disappointing, but the star of music shone brighter than ever at the Vogler Spring Festival.

Shorts

Project, Dublin

By Gerry Colgan

The first perspective on Fishamble's new production can hardly avoid being a statistical one. The company's search for new writers produced some 300 scripts, from which it selected 14. It then went in search of six dynamic directors and rounded up eight well-known and talented actors. Throw in five designers and the invisible stage-management staff and the charm is wound up. The good ship Shorts has been launched.

It is such a major and meritorious undertaking that one tends to be swept away in the general euphoria, but a reviewer must pay due homage to the beady eye. It is clear that, of so many first plays restricted to about 10 minutes' duration, it is unlikely that many, even any, are likely to be outstanding. That need not and does not mean the evening lacks enjoyment or the buzz generated by the glorious uncertainties of the stage.

As the directors and actors are distributed over the entire agenda, it is simpler to name rather than associate them with particular plays. So directing with easy insights and control are Jo Mangan, Mark O'Brien, Siobhán Miley, Ronan Leahy, Tom Conway and David Horan. The performers are something of a roll of honour, and it shows: Charlie Bonner, Clodagh O' Donoghue, Des Cave, Eamonn Hunt, Geraldine Plunkett, Frank Mackey, Jasmine Russell and Carmel Concannon Stephens.

The balance of the offerings tilts towards comedy, and it is a pity that the opening one, the very funny All The Glove In The World (by Dawn Bradfield) is partly frustrated by its staging in the foyer, where many people could not see it. Mary Quirk (Aino Dubrawsky) comes in two parts, at the start and the end, and fits neatly into the overall concept. More sombre material includes Game (Stella Fehily) and A New Suit (Bryan Delaney), the first filled with menace and the other with pathos.

It is probably the case that, for the authors, these plays will prove more of a stimulus than an end in themselves, but isn't that the whole idea?

4 Men & A Dog

Mother Redcap's, Dublin

By Siobhán Long

Gerry O'Connor, Cathal Hayden, Dónal Murphy, Kevin Doherty and Gino Lupari: the roll-call is formidable, each musician secure in a solo reputation yet hell-bent on inhabiting a different identity in this ensemble. Theirs is a magnificent mix of traditional rhythms and sweeping country, with more than a tincture of Tijuana hallucinogens thrown in.

O'Connor and Hayden are two of the most-rounded fiddle and banjo players south of the Mason-Dixon Line or east of the Pale. Murphy does for the accordion what Martin Hayes did for the fiddle, unpleating its pleats and assembling them all over again. As for Doherty, his lineage stretches from Hank Williams to Joe Cooley. Lupari is that rare breed: an Italo-Magherafeltian, and his bodhrán is no more than a daisy in a bull's mouth.

These boys tickled the old tunes, including Music For A Found Harmonium and Joe Cooley's Roaring Mary, and coaxed a rake of their own into the limelight. Doherty is convinced the Brazilian hoopla of Bloomsday will line their pockets with silver, and if there's any justice this gemstone remembrance of Molly and Leopold's courting days will sweep the charts worldwide.

Rafters were raised, sweat poured from unspeakable locations; this was a night to remember and a band whose reincarnation is complete. Glorious mayhem to savour long after the rains of the bank holiday subsided.