REVIEWS

Martin Adamsreviews Izumi Kimura (piano) at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerhard Markson, also at the NCH.

Izumi Kimura (piano)

NCH, Dublin

Greg Caffrey - Firefly Catching. Le Petit Nicolas. Takashi Yoshimatsu - Pleiades Dances (exc). Toshinao Sato - Light Coloured Album (exc). Ronan Guilfoyle - Dance Suite No 1 (first performance).

Izumi Kimura has lived in Ireland for more than 12 years. In her written introduction to this lunchtime concert of music from Japan and Ireland, she declared that she has learned to "appreciate the beauty of Japanese thinking - the strength and durability based on the simple yet intricately subtle mind".

She contrasted this with "the Irish way - the strength and the vitality equipped with the advanced sense of humour".

The music fitted this picture, as did the fact that Kimura has worked closely with the Irish composers concerned. The two pieces by Greg Caffrey (b 1963) were cogent, despite their stylistic eclecticism.

Firefly Catching, which opened the programme, and was not receiving its first performance as originally billed, suggests an impressionist mode of expression, but via a jaggedness of design that is definitely of our time.

By contrast, Ronan Guilfoyle's Dance Suite No 1 was receiving its first performance. The idea came from baroque music, especially Bach, and the composer's desire to write a suite based on contemporary dances and styles. Although I found its three movements - funk, tango and jig - a bit long for their material, it's a gritty piece that holds one's attention.

The two Japanese works on the programme dated from the 1970s and '80s. Just as the Irish music, and especially Guifoyle's, inhabits a world between classical and other styles, so these combine western techniques and oriental character.

One of the most impressive movements was An August Laying to Rest from Toshinao Sato's Light Coloured Album, in which a dirge-like ground bass supports a fascinating array of ideas and textures.

Throughout the concert, Kimura played with a natural kind of musicianship that never strove too much.

Her easy authority made each piece seem to come across as it should - persuasively.

Hanslip, Fahy, RTÉ NSO/Markson.

NCH, Dublin

Stephen Gardner - Hallelujah (first performance). Mozart - Violin Concerto No 5. Messiaen - Réveil des Oiseaux. Ravel - La Valse.

Two items in this unusually designed programme involved soloists. One was Thérèse Fahy, who gave a reliable and sensitive account of the prominent piano part in Messaien's Réveil des Oiseaux. The other was young English musician Chloe Hanslip who appeared in Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 in A K219.

Her animation and sense of scale were excellent for a work that needs to sound airy and spontaneous. In both pieces, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gerhard Markson were on strong form, responsive in detailed discourse with the soloists, and alert to stylistic finesse.

Stephen Gardner's written introduction to his new work, Hallelujah, begins thus: "The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was seen by certain leaders as the right thing to do, and these leaders believed they were guided by an understanding of God. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed."

The composer's descriptive note barely hints at specific meaning in a work that constantly suggests meaning. From the gradual accumulation of a "primordial soup", through striking moments of intermittent, peaceful clarity, to the return of the opening soup, this 23-minute work seemed imbued with sorrow, but also with anger and futility. Gardner is a composer who usually does things intensely, and this is one of his most intense works yet. It's unsettling but I dare say that's what the composer wanted. The concert ended with a scintillating account of Ravel's La Valse. Markson's superb pacing and the orchestra's grip on detail captured something rare in performances of this piece. It had graceful moments, but above all it seemed the apotheosis of the waltz, both as a cultural high point, and as a symbol of cultural decadence.