Reviews

A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.

ICO/Hunka

IMMA, Dublin

Strauss - Sextet from Capriccio. Raymond Deane - Concursus. Vivaldi - Concerto in D for Four Violins RV549. Janácek - Suite

"Like 15 people crossing on a tightrope at once with no safety net." That's how composer Raymond Deane light-heartedly described his new work, Concursus, just a few moments before the Irish Chamber Orchestra gave the Dublin premiere at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Deane's crowded tightrope image suggests chaos, fear and panic. Even if that's what it's like to perform the piece, that's not what it's like to hear.

We're a long way from chaos, in particular, with music whose trajectory and formal design are so immediately and so enjoyably appreciable, even on first hearing. The work's four-note kernel - which Deane appropriated from a miniature he wrote in 2003 - is quietly introduced and explored. What follows is a slowly repeating, tidal-type pattern of build-up, climax and repose, the high-points frenetic and dense, the quieter moments suggesting a wide spectrum of possible emotional origins.

The work is close to the baroque concerto grosso in style, featuring unflashy violin and viola solos that drift in and out of the smooth interactive texture created by double string ensemble. The four-note kernel returns periodically, reassuringly, and receives a delicate cadenza treatment from the two soloists. The piece seemed just a little long in its final quarter, as though ruminating over what had already been most eloquently said. But this perception may have less to do with the score than with the otherwise warm, committed performance which nonetheless ran several minutes over the 17 suggested by Deane in his programme note.

This would have been the call of leader Katherine Hunka who otherwise produced the most controlled playing I have heard the ICO give under her direction.

The short Vivaldi Concerto for Four Violins was sprightly in its two outer movements and searing in the central slow one. And the long, rich phrases of the romantic works by Janacek and Strauss were beautifully shaped, with Strauss's Capriccio Sextet sounding as warm and comfortable as the afternoon outside was wet and dreary.

Michael Dungan

Tony Bennett

Vicar Street, Dublin

Everybody has their own picture of Tony Bennett; the clean-cut 1950s pop star; the dapper 1960s jazz crooner; the ironic 1990s retro-icon. Still, we can all agree on certain things; those half-moon eyes over an easy smile; a brow smoother than it has a right to be, an immaculate suit, and the endearing way he accepts applause - clapping softly in return, clasping his hands and patting his heart.

It's a modest display from Anthony Dominick Benedetto - his original name, Bob Hope insisted, would never fit on a marquee - and typically deferential, coming from the true custodian of the American Songbook.

Schooled in the golden age of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, the genial Bennett still knows that presentation is key. "Thank you for coming by tonight!" he calls out during Watch What Happens with a trademark salute, raising his thumbs when the sold-out crowd recognises the bouncy melody of The Best Is Yet To Come.

His voice still husky and honeyed, Bennett and his clean-toned four-piece band conjure up bittersweet sentiments in Maybe This Time, earning soft "oohs" of nostalgia for I Remember You. His audience rapport glows brighter still with each easy anecdote or confession - Hank Williams complaining about a rendition ("True story!"); the plentiful hits of his youth ("I was the Madonna of my day"); and why he won't perform Rags to Riches ("They forced me to do it").

Expertly backed by his band's effortless swing, Bennett's hits tumble out - The Good Life, If I Ruled The World, an obligatory I Left My Heart in San Francisco and a charismatic, unamplified Fly Me To The Moon - always with a self-effacing word of how fortunate, how lucky he is to sing them. True, none of these songs are his, but you can't deny he makes each his own.

Peter Crawley

Ulster Orchestra/Tuomas Ollila

Ulster Hall, Belfast

Väinö Raitio - Maidens of the Headland. Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 3. Sibelius - Symphony No 2

Väinö Raitio (1891-1945) introduced modernism to Finnish music in the 1920s before reverting to a simpler, more traditional style in the following decade. His short tone poem Neiet niemien nenissä (Maidens of the Headland - but it seems so much more poetical in Finnish) relies too much on folk-song or folk-influenced material but shows a Sibelius-like sensitivity for orchestral texture and a Sibelius-like gift for creating atmosphere. This composer, a name probably unfamiliar to most listeners, is a real discovery.

After the warm, imaginative sound of the Raitio, Ollila's dry, didactic accompaniment to the Beethoven concerto was a disappointment, but there were compensations in the playing of the very young Belfast-born pianist Michael McHale. He has good tone, natural taste, fine feeling, and a sound technique. One feels that he will in time go into the music more, and explore its emotional depths. This was nevertheless sincere and unaffected playing.

If there was a slight feeling of reserve in the concerto, there was no holding back in the performance of the symphony. The performance had its interpretative quirks; there were odd tempi, both slow and fast, and moments of rhetorical exaggeration which threatened the structural continuity. There was little feeling of building logically to the final climax, which relied on plodding emphasis to provide a sense of fulfilment. But the best moments, which came mostly in the first two movements, created a mood of expectation, as if the players were listening as much as they were playing.

Dermot Gault

Gilles Cachemaille, baritone; Pascal Rogé, piano

Waterfront Hall Studio, Belfast

Saint-Saëns - L'Attente. Guitares et Mandolines. Aimons-nous. Danse Macabre. Chausson - Chanson d'Ophélia. Sérénade italienne. Nocturne. La Caravane. Ibert - Chansons de Don Quichotte. Poulenc - Mélodies sur des poèmes de G. Apollinaire. Quatre Poèmes de G. Apollinaire

The BBC's current series of free Sunday afternoon concerts devoted to French song continued with a recital given by the Swiss-French bass-baritone Gilles Cachemaille and the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé.

This was a winning combination, Cachemaille's rich tone and peculiarly French sweetness and suavity matching Rogé's superbly refined pianism. The rippling arpeggios of Chausson's Nocturne became iridescent washes of sound, while the tolling chords of the Wagnerian La Caravane were impressively sombre. At the same time there was plenty of character, and humour, in Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre (later reworked into the well-known orchestral piece), and the earthier, more cabaret-like feel of Poulenc's Apollinaire settings.

The French composers of the late 19th and early 20th century put a lot of their best music into their songs. Saint-Saëns can be urbane and smoothly accomplished, but the Mediterranean charm of Guitares et Mandolines, to his own text, is delightful. There were discoveries too in the Ibert Chansons, written for an early sound film starring the Russian bass Chaliapin (Ravel songs commissioned were not ready in time).

The Chanson à Dulcinée included a surprise in the form of a very fetching falsetto. But as usual it was the Poulenc songs, acid and sentimental by turns, with their marriage of high art and cabaret, which made the most immediate appeal. Cachemaille's vivid characterisations went a long way toward conveying the meaning of the words without the help of texts or translations, but I still would have liked to have had either, preferably both.

Dermot Gault