REVIEWS

Reviewed  today are Martha Wainwright at the Olympia, the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet at the National Gallery, Our Lady's Choral Society under Proinnsías Ó Duinn at the NCH and Manu Katché at the Tripod.

Martha Wainwright

Olympia, Dublin

She stalks on stage with a newfound sensuality reminiscent of a young Helen Mirren. Martha Wainwright has finally found her own voice and, perhaps not surprisingly, it's a full-lunged, deep-throated thing of emotional intensity and ragged beauty.

She brought her mother, Kate McGarrigle, on this leg of her tour, and how the crowd loved her for it. Mother and daughter basked in the delight of their shared harmonies, and McGarrigle's bone-dry wit added another nuance of sophistication to what was an evening bathed in musical riches.

Wainwright has wisely ditched much of the whiny, self-referential angst of her earlier years, and these days manages to finger the universal in the personal without having to perform unseemly open-heart surgery on herself night after bleeding night.

You want camp melodrama? She's got it in Bleeding All Over You. Need an infusion of hard-rockin', no-compromisin' love-shack blues? Try Ball and Chain for size. And if it's the most sublime, emotionally fraught cabaret that turns you on, she's got it by the bucketful with Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu?'

Wainwright's bare-boned band, featuring her husband, the multi-instrumentalist (and it must be said, cartoonishly enthusiastic Guinness drinker and wearer of the worst paddywhackery headgear imaginable) Brad Albetta, knew precisely where to buffer and boost, relishing in particular her newfound appetite for jazz-soaked songs with Big Themes. Her duet with Kate McGarrigle on The Year of the Dragonwas skin-tinglingly beautiful and her late reading of Lena Horne's Stormy Weathercopper-fastened her right to take her place among the vocalists worth fording a river to hear - preferably after dark, with nothing more than a candle and a bottle of wine for company.

She has blithely played second fiddle to Rufus for years, but Martha's got such a hold on both her French-Canadian inheritance and her own hard-rockin' heartstrings that there's a strong suspicion her best is yet to come - though she's surely coming very close to it these days. SIOBHÁN LONG

RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet

National Gallery, Dublin

Mozart - Quartet in E flat, K428. Schumann - Quartet in A, Op 41, No 3. Brahms - Quartet in A minor, Op 51, No 2.

The RTÉ Vanbrugh continued their sampling of Mozart's "Haydn" string quartets and Brahms's chamber music with this afternoon concert in the Shaw Room at the National Gallery.

K428 comes third in the set of six that Mozart dedicated to Haydn, "their Father, Guide and Friend". The set marks the composer's coming of age in quartet-writing and took three years to write, dating back to 1782 when it's likely that he performed some of Haydn's new Op 33 quartets alongside the composer. K428 disguises its sophistication - notably in its rich, chromatic harmony, above all in the slow movement - with a sunny, E flat character.

There is warmth also in Schumann's A major quartet, written in loneliness while the composer's beloved Clara was away touring. It's the last of his total output of three, all of them composed within an incredible few weeks in June and July 1842. Scholars point out deficiencies, but its romantic honesty and almost Purcell-like tension in the second movement variations make it worth performing and hearing.

Also managing just three quartets in the post-Beethoven 19th century was Brahms, who destroyed more than he published. His second, the Op 51 No2 in A minor, features much symphonic thought condensed to just four parts, much canonic writing, and lots of changes of character, such as hints of Viennese waltz and Hungarian gypsy music.

Alas, this was not the Vanbrugh in top form. Clarity was regularly lost or threatened by small lapses in tuning - just single notes here and there, but enough to muddy harmonies fatally. And the dynamic range was unduly narrow, generalised, so that often the playing came across more as a readthrough than a performance.

Among the afternoon's better moments were a robust spirit in the jaunty Finale of the Schumann, and a warm sense of repose in the quiet, F-major oasis that turns up unexpectedly in the middle of Brahms's A major slow movement.

The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet will play the same programme at Aula Maxima, University College Cork, on Thursday at 8pm  MICHAEL DUNGAN

OLCS/Ó Duinn

NCH, Dublin

Mendelssohn - St Paul.

Pope Benedict's declaration that 2008-9 would be the bi-millennial year of St Paul has prompted some dusting off of Mendelssohn's undervalued oratorio on the apostle's life.

This performance by Our Lady's Choral Society (OLCS) and the National Sinfonia under Proinnsías Ó Duinn was the first of two at the National Concert Hall this season. The second, by the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under David Hill, is scheduled for April.

The Guinness Choir and its conductor, David Milne, who performed St Paulin January 2007, can therefore take a little pleasure in having been ahead of the game.

If you were expecting the kind of brisk precision with which OLCS customarily dispatch their Messiahchoruses, this occasion didn't satisfy. To be sure, the more massive unified declamations came off with this choir's characteristic eager verve. But a tendency to yield to the easy self-propulsion of Mendelssohn's counterpoint made for some discomfiting insecurity in the fugues.

Ó Duinn held things loosely together at mostly moderate tempos, with some fraying of coordination in the recitatives and at the key event of Saul's conversion.

The wind-heavy orchestral balances might have spelled danger for the vocal soloists Cara O'Sullivan (soprano), Raphaela Mangan (alto), Ross Scanlon (tenor) and John Molloy (bass), except that all four demonstrated considerable power.

Mangan held her own with some sonorous low tones, despite making a wide shot at the start of her short solo contribution. For the granite-voiced Molloy, there could be little threat from the orchestra.

This was a not inauspicious oratorio debut for Scanlon. Although he was still dealing with some minor issues of assimilation and vocal management, his promising tone and communicative instincts made a memorable impression.

Nothing, however, touched the thoughtful phrasing and poetically persuasive expression of O'Sullivan. The evening's finest moments were hers.  ANDREW JOHNSTONE

Manu Katché

Tripod, Dublin

To jazzers, he's a rock drummer; to rockers, he's a jazz drummer - which may account for the crossover appeal that Manu Katché's quintet has achieved with the release of Neighbourhood(2005) and Playground(2007) on ECM.

In the line-up that's now on tour here, Tore Brunborg (tenor/ soprano), Franck Avitabile (piano) and Jerome Regard (bass) replace Trygve Seim, Marcin Wasilewski and Slawomir Kurkiewicz from the Playground quintet, with only Katché and trumpeter Mathias Eick remaining.

Effectively, the changes make little difference to the music, which is all drawn from the two ECM discs that proved a surprise commercial success (in jazz, the term is relative) for the label. The repertoire is an illustration of the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach, and who can blame anyone for that? It is straightforward, groove-oriented material, full of little melodic and rhythmic hooks to facilitate the groove, attractive, easy on the ear, tuneful, undemanding and extremely well performed by a crisply together band of quality musicians.

That they're all capable of more challenging things is beside the point when the results they produce are, within these limitations, enjoyable. It does mean, however, that the band quickly reaches a high level of execution and more or less remains there without producing any surprises.

Most theme treatments at this concert relied on unison trumpet and tenor, with Eick and Brunborg achieving a really well-balanced and blended frontline sound.

As a soloist, Brunborg is somewhat in the aggressive mould of the late Joe Henderson. Eick is the more lyrical, especially striking on Take Off and Land, Miles Awayand (the first encore) Lovely Walk,where, following a brusque tenor solo and a tension-building piano solo, he showed, not for the first time, the ability to stamp his own personality on proceedings, neither yielding to nor competing with the groove established.

As for the engaging leader, Katché is like a voluble force of nature, constantly commenting musically, goading and supporting the others. With so much going on rhythmically, it's perhaps understandable that the thematic material was kept so simple.

But there was also enough to suggest that Katché, Regard and Avitabile are themselves a powerhouse trio capable of generating considerable heat.

The Manu Katché Quintet plays at Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick, tonight and at the Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Co Meath, tomorrow RAY COMISKEY