REVIEWS

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RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet

National Gallery, Dublin

Haydn– Quartet in D, Op 76, No 5. Beethoven– Quartet in E flat ,

Op 74 (Harp). Mendelssohn– Quintet in B flat, Op 87.

The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet – with viola player Graham Oppenheimer replacing the indisposed Simon Aspell – offered works by three very different composers but all written within a half-century of each other.

They played them in chronological order, opening with Haydn’s late, elegant No 5 from the set of six (Op 76, his final complete set) which he finished in 1797, aged 65. These late quartets demonstrate new ideas Haydn had recently acquired during a hugely successful second sojourn in England. In short, he had come to understand that the genre of string quartet was expanding beyond the salon and courtly chamber and into the public concert hall.

And yet. Haydn, the “father of the string quartet”, maintained in these late masterpieces the essential intimacy created by four people playing one-to-a-part together. And this was how the Vanbrugh performed. Haydn’s grace and perfection were communicated via fine, crisp playing that remained also warm and personable.

In 1809, just over 10 years later, Beethoven was finishing his Op 74 quartet, distractingly nicknamed “Harp” because of its pizzicato arpeggios in the first movement. A more apposite nickname would have been “Surprisingly-laidback-following- on-the-heels-of-the-intellectually-rigorous-Op-59-set”.

So where the programme might have offered a striking contrast between the two composers, instead there was a continuity of mood, if not of musical language.

The Vanbrugh again played with warmth, especially in the increasingly rich cantabile of the lyrical slow movement.

Viola player Cian Ó Dúill joined the quartet to provide the extra linear, harmonic and textural depth in the concert’s final work, Mendelssohn’s Quintet No 2, from 1845. It’s a wonderful piece that suffers unduly from comparison with his Octet, Op 20, the crowning glory of his chamber output, written during his teens, after which all was supposedly downhill.

Thankfully, the Vanbrugh – playing with great vitality in the outer movements and with a noble cello solo in the central Adagio– seemed to have adopted the composer's thinking when he declared his intention "not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure". MICHAEL DUNGAN

Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

Douglas Hyde Gallery, TCD

Rachel Unthank and her band of cohorts, Becky Unthank, Stef Conner and Niopha Keegan, have a lot resting on their shoulders. They are being charged with leading a revival in English folk music, of sparking a lantern that many had thought long extinguished. It’s disconcerting to hear young voices singing tracks that are so dark, but it is the combination of innocence and earthiness, wonder and wisdom, that makes them so fascinating.

Set opener I Wish, I Wishis a strong example of their talents. The sweetness of the melodies has an unsettling undertow, with the intensity building to a gentle snarl from the piano. Many tracks have more than a dram of darkness, carefully teased out of its cave by Becky Unthank's breathy vocals, which contrast with Rachel's robust, lilting voice. White Thornis a case in point, while Blue Bleezin' Blind Drunkis the bluesy lament of a beaten wife. This is tough, harsh source material handled with consideration and adroitness.

There is no percussion in this band, other than Becky’s occasional foot-tapping or the percussive bass drive of the piano, and the timing slips in and out in places. It is part of the charm of these tracks that despite decades of being sung, they are rough-hewn affairs.

However, a box player or some solid beat could bring a sharp dramatic edge in places, and perhaps smooth out some hesitancy and the band’s occasional lack of cohesion.

But these are minor complaints, and although the songs drink from dark sources, this set is an uplifting affair.

The band’s between-song banter is terrifically charming, while tracks such as Blackbird burst with life, the tumbling chord progression lifting the room and injecting enough humour (along with the wit of the performers, the clog dancing and the singalong choruses) to make for a powerful evening’s entertainment.

On tour until Sunday, playing at North Down Museum, Bangor, tonight, Letterkenny Regional Cultural Centre tomorrow, the Clarence Hotel, Sligo, on Sat, and Black Box, Belfast, on Sun LAURENCE MACKIN

Jones, RTÉ NSO/ Houlihan

NCH, Dublin

Derek Ball – Aes Triplex 1, Full On. Le monde des ombres.

William Sweeney – St Blane’s Hill.

Derek Ball – Voilà. Aes Triplex 3, Valediction.

Derek Ball’s career as a composer was, in his own words, “interrupted by a 35-year spell as a doctor”. Born in Letterkenny in 1949, he studied composition in Dublin with Archie Potter and James Wilson. He wrote some works in the 1970s and 1980s, but since the mid-1990s the trickle has become a torrent.

This concert, the last in the Horizons series, featured five distinctive pieces, all of which show Ball’s love of subtle complexity. Sometimes it forms a backdrop to a simpler foreground, sometimes it dominates. Almost always, the material has an engaging strength. Above all, this is a composer who knows how to make shifting patterns of melody and texture create large-scale rhythmic patterns.

Le monde des ombres(2005) sometimes plods a bit, but it never loses its grip. And the two works from the Aes Triplex series (2008) – 1, Full Onand 3, Valediction– hit directly home.

The viola concerto, Voilá (2004-8), was written in memory of the violist from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Charlie Maguire. The solo part, played with brilliant élan by Matthew Jones, is amplified, and that intensifies the energetic contest between soloist and large orchestra. Snatches of real tunes, flamboyance, material that is sometimes shared and sometimes not – this concerto has unflagging energy, even when quiet, and the viola is first among its not quite equals.

Ball has lived in Scotland for many years, so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the work he chose by another composer was St Blane's Hill(1991), by Glasgow-based William Sweeney. This vivid, characterful piece incorporates numerous references to traditional Scottish-Gaelic music, in ways that go far beyond mere quotation and that are at the music's core.

Here and throughout the concert, the playing of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Robert Houlihan, was effective in presenting works that show deep musical intelligence. MARTIN ADAMS