Reviews

Tynan, Hartmann-Clavérie, Muraro, RTÉ NSO/Rophé NCH, Dublin is reviewed by MICHAEL DUNGANand Proud, IBO/Huggett at the National Gallery, Dublin is reviewed by MICHAEL DERVAN

Ravel - Alborado del Gracioso; Shéhérazade. Messiaen - Turangalîla- Symphonie

ALTHOUGH RAVEL'S Shéhérazade sets lines not from the legendary Arabian story-teller but by the composer's Parisian contemporary Tristan Klingsor, the atmosphere he creates belongs to the 1001 Nights and to the opera inspired by them that he never finished.

Conductor Pascal Rophé and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra captured this atmosphere, making good account of the languid exoticism conjured by Ravel, master of orchestration.

Irish soprano Ailish Tynan subtly inhabited the persona of a young girl whose hunger for life and longing for love are encompassed in Klingsor's three poems. Above all, Tynan - who is young - sounded young, something not every young soprano can do when required. Her French was natural and understated, and with her warm, nicely measured voice she matched the poems for their quiet intimacy.

In this she was not always complemented by Rophé, who sometimes allowed Ravel's sweeping orchestral ardour to mask the solo voice. Something similar occasionally marred Alborado del Gracioso, whose jolly character and dancing, Spanish colours sometimes saw the first violins rendered all but inaudible by the exuberance of the percussion and brass who were all in very fine fettle.

Even in the massive work that occupied the concert's second half - Messiaen's extraordinary Turangalîla-Symphonie - the eerie, oscillating contributions from Valérie Hartmann-Clavérie on the electronic ondes Martenot were often lost in the overall texture.

That aside, Rophé ignited a rumbustious tour de force from his huge array of players, supported by a virtuoso performance from piano soloist Roger Muraro. The 10-movement, 70-minute outburst - described by Messiaen as a "hymn to joy . . . superhuman, overflowing, blinding, unlimited" - was encapsulated in the two sharply contrasting movements at the work's centre: the mad careering of The Joy of the Blood of the Stars followed by the drowsy air and twittering birdsong from Muraro in The Garden of Love's Sleep.

Proud, IBO/Huggett at the National Gallery, Dublin

Johann Bernhard Bach - Suite in E minor. Johann Sebastian Bach - Violin Concerto in D minor BWV1052. Harpsichord Concerto in A BWV1055. Suite in D BWV1068.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON'S National Gallery programme from the Irish Baroque Orchestra offered a sequence of Bach with a couple of twists.

The orchestra's artistic director, violinist Monica Huggett, chose to open with a suite by an obscure member of the Bach clan, the great Johann Sebastian's second cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach (1676-1749).

She included the Concerto in D minor BWV1052 in a reconstruction for violin rather than the surviving version for harpsichord. And she offered the Suite in D, the one with the famous air, in a version that dispenses with oboes, trumpets and drums, leaving just a string orchestra.

The suites that framed the programme were delivered with beautifully sprung grace. The Suite in E minor by JB Bach is lighter in tone than the Suite in D by JS. But, in as deft a performance as the orchestra presented, it made a delightful opening to the programme.

With strings alone, Huggett found a degree of internal contrast in the closing work so that one hardly missed the familiar colours of missing instruments, and the piece seemed wholly effective without the familiar overtones of ceremonial splendour. Huggett was an energetic but slightly off-colour soloist in the uncredited reconstruction of BWV1052 as a violin concerto.

Malcolm Proud, playing with a reduced orchestra (one player to a part), was the rock-solid soloist in the Harpsichord Concerto in A.