A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.
RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
Beethoven - Symphonies 1, 2 & 5
In all the years that I've been attending concerts by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and its predecessor, the RTÉSO, the great music of the classical period - the works of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn - has been the area of repertoire to cause the greatest problems in performance.
At times, it's almost as if there's a mismatch, musically, emotionally and technically, between players and composers.
The consistency of pressure that yields results in romantic melodic writing is frequently mis-applied, and the necessary clarity of line and interplay between instruments can be replaced with a view that's more reminiscent of something seen through the murk of a grimy window.
Instead of the necessary rhythmic definition you may find a more generalised thrust.
And motivic give and take between wind and strings can become a one-sided affair, in which the instruments with the greatest natural weight automatically dominate.
Gerhard Markson, who began his five-day Beethoven symphony cycle at the National Concert Hall on Monday, has in the past managed to invest the orchestra's Beethoven playing with a high degree of tension and energy.
In Monday's programme of the First, Second and Fifth symphonies, that energy was only fitfully in evidence, and the long-standing limitations were all too clearly evident.
Markson and his players seemed altogether more comfortable with the gravitas of the Fifth than the unstressful and sometimes effervescent moods of the First and Second symphonies.
The First was the slackest in performance, with the slow introduction sounding unnecessarily drawn out, and a strangely ambling quality for much of the first movement's main Allegro.
The slow movement sounded almost brisk by comparison, and it was only in the Scherzo and particularly the Finale that any real sharpness of focus materialised.
The Second Symphony came off better, but the problems of internal balance persisted. The lightness and sharpness for the very end of the Larghetto suggested a change of mode; this was quickly contradicted, however, by the rough ensemble at the start of the Scherzo.
The Fifth Symphony continued the pattern in which the endings of movements seemed to be finding their expressive point much more successfully than the openings - this was especially true of the Andante - and the playing was more consistently alert than in either of the works before the interval.
With significantly more string players on the stage for the Fifth Symphony, Markson indulged in a richness of sonority that he had avoided in the earlier symphonies.
He let the music have its head from time to time, without letting it run away with itself, though the exercise of restraint created a flat spot in the middle of the Finale. All in all, it has to be said, a curate's egg of an opening to an eagerly anticipated series.
The Beethoven series continues until Friday
Michael Dervan
Marc Copland & Gary Peacock
Liberty Hall, Dublin
For these craftsmen, quiet has always been the new loud. Marc Copland's previous Irish visit had many overturning their bucket of choice superlatives to describe his wonderfully involved solo piano technique.Couple this intricate, thoughtful playing with the crisp rhythmic precision of Gary Peacock's double-bass and you have a pairing perfectly in tune for the wee small hours.
As shown on What It Says, Copland and Peacock's 2004 release, the duo's chamber jazz is oft times brooding and intense, but always compelling.
This is rarefied conservatory music where it's the barest touch which always has the greatest resonance, and the full story unfolds through textures rather than sounds. When the music has been sandpapered down to its bare essentials, it is left to the stresses and tones of the players to punctuate the landscape and carry the show.
Peacock's bass playing ebbs and flows throughout, while he keeps a seasoned eye on where Copland is leading each tune. Having worked for such a long time with Keith Jarrett's magical trio, Peacock has the ability to catch and maintain a pattern down pat, something which presents Copland with the freedom to build and sustain mesmerisingly intense chords and angles.
Copland certainly doesn't disappoint when given the space and such muscular support. While there is occasionally a sense that his fondness for technique favours precision over passion, it doesn't prevent the pianist from hitting occasional starry heights. Both Watching the Silence and Requiem slowly reveal the pianist's form, the steady playing giving way to eventual cliff-hangers and dramatic fades. From time to time, there's a real flourish, such as how he closes one piece with a wonderfully poised, dream-like, romantic take on Alex North Love Theme from Spartacus.
The real beauty of this performance, however, lies in the subtle conversation between the duo, one which also signals a number of surreptitious innovations in the playing to everyone else in the room. It's by challenging each other's styles and routines that the pair broach fresh ground each night, with Peacock in particular prodding each piece into new or unmapped directions.
Such a constant inquisition will always yield new answers provided the players are willing to tag along. Tonight's conversation was one you'd be willing to eavesdrop on again.
Jim Carroll
Two Houses
Táin Theatre, Dundalk
Drogheda-based Upstate Live company has come up with a typically creative show, which first saw the stage 21 years ago courtesy of Team Theatre. Since then John McArdle's play (for ages 8-10) has been hailed abroad, but this is the first public showing in Ireland.
It is placed in the 1840s, and the two houses are the absentee landowner's mansion and the primitive cottage of one of his tenants. Bailiff Arnold Cosgrave (Padraic McIntyre), a conscientious man, opens the play by telling the audience about his duty to collect rents, and how only a very few defaulters need to be prodded a little - the diligent payers and his benevolent employer deserve no less. Fair's fair, we agree.
But the number of defaulters is growing, and becoming mutinous under Cosgrave's pressure. Miss Vanessa, the landlord's daughter (Jennifer Mooney) is concerned for her tenants, but believes that law and order must prevail. A young couple (John Finegan and Joanne Mallon), whose family of six has been reduced to two through illness and deprivation, are the first to be evicted. Through their situation, something of the historic background to land ownership seeps through, and the same listeners who earlier agreed with punitive measures now see the issue differently.
This précis does not do justice to the play. The four characters, beautifully acted, engage directly with the audience and with each other. There are no baddies; each is trying to act out of conviction and conscience, and the complexity of the wider world comes through with force. Declan O'Gorman conducts the 75-minute piece with a sensitive baton. The show is free, funded by the Arts Council, the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation and Drogheda Borough Council; an offer not to be refused.
Runs to Friday; then at Warrenpoint, May 16-20, 11am
Gerry Colgan
