Reviews

Kilkenny Arts Festival: Michael Dervan and Rosita Boland review events at this week's Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, St Canice's Cathedral

Violin Concerto In G Hob VIIa: 4 - Haydn. Verklärte Nacht - Schoenberg. Sextet In G Op 36 - Brahms

Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was once a leading name in baroque music. Half a century ago, with its conductor, Karl Münchinger, it was among the first to appropriate the orchestral works of Bach and Corelli from symphony orchestras, and its recordings fought for prominence against the early output of the period-performance movement.

Since 1995 the orchestra has had as its principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies, who has been forging links with composers such as Philip Glass and Giya Kancheli. But the orchestra's programme on Saturday steered clear of these developments.

On the evidence of their handling of Haydn's Violin Concerto in G the Stuttgarters' way in earlier repertoire is still of an old-fashioned, unruffled smoothness. The airiness of phrasing and sharpness of articulation that inform the best performances of Haydn were nowhere to be found, however.

It would have been easy to imagine that the players' motto for this concert was on the lines of "never play louder than lovely", and the effect in Schoenberg's early Verklärte Nacht was to produce a surface of unusual sweetness and beauty. The Richard Dehmel poem that inspired the work tells of a couple walking in a wood at night. She is pregnant by another man, but the response to her confession is a declaration that their love will make the child theirs. The performance seemed set on ridding Schoenberg's post-Tristanesque writing of all of its tension and angst, a strange and not entirely persuasive undertaking.

Verklärte Nacht was written as a string sextet, and the string-orchestra arrangement was made by the composer himself. Brahms, however, had no hand in the upsizing of his String Sextet in G, where the occasional reversion to solo strings seemed to detract from rather than add to the overall effect. The outcome was rather bland, in tune with an evening when surface polish often seemed the greatest concern.

Kopelman String Quartet, St Canice's Cathedral

Quartet Movement In C Minor D703, Quartet No 3, Death And The Maiden Quartet - Schubert

The Kopelman String Quartet is a rather unusual phenomenon, a young string quartet with a membership of experienced, middle-aged players. The group was formed as recently as last summer, but the players, all now in their mid-50s, have distinguished records in playing chamber music.

First violinist Mikhail Kopelman led the Borodin Quartet for 20 years. Second violinist Boris Kuschnir and viola player Igor Sulyga were founding members of the Moscow String Quartet. And cellist Mikhail Milman, a long-time member of the Moscow Virtuosi, has played with the likes of Evgeny Kissin and Yuri Bashmet, as well as the Borodin and Tokyo Quartets.

Relationships within string quartets have often been compared to marriages, and, judging Sunday's performances from a musical point of view, the Kopelman's would not appear to be made in heaven.

In Schubert's isolated Quartet Movement in C minor, the players showed straight away a dynamic penetration and expressive vigour that had been missing from the playing of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra the night before. But the quartet's music-making proved to be patchy. There were moments when the quality of their collective pedigree showed through. Kopelman is beautifully free in the upper register, and when everyone is focused the group produces delectably textured pianissimos.

The limitations lay in the sense of routine that the playing often communicated, a feeling of familiar music being traversed with familiar, well-worn responses. This, of course, is just the sort of playing that at its best can come across as music-making deeply rooted in tradition. But on Sunday that tradition sounded rather too well worn, a little casual and, at times, even a little frayed. It had its moments, to be sure. But it came as no surprise at the end of what felt like a too-long evening that the audience didn't even bother to press for an encore.

Masquerade, Watergate Theatre

Half an hour into Sunday's performance of Masquerade, by Lithuania's Small Theatre of Vilnius, the fire alarm went off, the lights went up and the safety curtain came down. Fireworks used on stage had triggered the alarm. It is a mark of the beguiling quality of Masquerade that the 10-minute interruption did not break the very special atmosphere of this show.

The plot of Masquerade has many familiar elements. At the winter masked ball of the title, Prince Zvezditch (Vytautas Rumsas) is given a silver bracelet by a masked woman, the Baroness Schtral (Inga Burneikaite). He vows to discover its owner. It belongs to Nina Arbenin (Adrija Cepaite), who lost it in the baroness's company. When the prince shows it to Nina's husband, (Arvydas Dapsys), Arbenin suspects his wife of infidelity. A cycle of mistrust, rumours, intrigue, jealousy and vengeance ends with Arbenin poisoning his innocent wife.

The quest for vengeance and the destruction of innocence are old themes, but, under director Rimas Tuminas, they become surreally new. Staging is everything in this show, which has many eerily beautiful visual highlights. Falling snow, for example, shows the way jealousy and coldness can trap you in a world as small as a snow dome.

With a cast of 18, this is an ensemble piece, with groups of gamblers, dancers and skaters performing as a marvellously potent Greek chorus, but the acting star is the servant (an ingeniously clowning Andrius Zebrauskas).

Masquerade was in Lithuanian. Perhaps the subtitles put off potential audiences; extraordinarily, this beautiful show got only mediocre houses.