Irish Times writers review a selection of recent events in Dublin
Antti Siirala (piano)
St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle
This piano recital was the fifth in Antti Siirala's Music Network tour of Ireland, taking in 11 venues in 11 days. It also celebrated the past year of an organisation that brings high-quality music-making "to every corner of Ireland", as its chairman, Peter Finnegan, put it in his informative introductory remarks.
Siirala's pianism is of the kind that places music above his own exceptional musical and technical abilities, and this recital showed why he has won so many accolades around the world.
In Bach's Partita No 1 in B flat, BWV825, clarity and independence of line was combined with rhythmic characteristics appropriate to the dance-style movements. The Corrente, for example, was driven by the energy of the individual parts as they worked together and in contrast; and the seemingly off-the-cuff, slightly mad ornaments in the repeats gave the whole movement the spontaneity of a high-class rock band.
Brahms's Rhapsody in B minor, Op 79 No 1, and the Variations on an Original Theme, Op 21 No 1, were played with a remarkable understanding of where the music was heading. Everything sounded purposeful but free - shaped by an impeccable sense of how to pace contrasts of tempo, colour and textural style. That same sensibility was no less apt in Deirdre McKay's atmospheric work, Time, Shining(1997-8). The way that Siirala played it, one imagined that it needed nothing more in order to be exactly what it is meant to be.
The recital ended with an insightful account of Chopin's Sonata No 3 in B Minor. Except in a luminously restful slow movement, it managed to be perpetually restless, without doing violence to the music's architectural integrity. It was a reminder of the extent to which Chopin's published music has its roots in his brilliance as an improviser.
• Tour continues in Belfast on Thur and Armagh on Fri
MARTIN ADAMS
The Sleeping Beauty
Helix, Dublin
Director Karl Harpur and Theatreworx Productions have drawn together a talented cast for the first professional pantomime in the Helix. The Sleeping Beautyhas all the features of a larger-scale production - excellent sets, stunning costumes, impressive young dancers, fairies, a princess and a prince - all cleverly fitted on to a smaller stage.
The traditional fairytale is given the full pantomime treatment, with veteran panto star Michael Grennell delighting in his role as Dame Lola (reaching his high point in a version of a Joe Dolan song) and former Eurovision singer Joe McCaul excelling as his sidekick, Tickles (judging by this performance alone, a career in panto beckons).
Martin Phillips is well cast as the randy king, while Deirdre Monaghan (who plays the sorceress) fills the stage with her evil intention. Paul Purcell and Aidan Mannion who play her sons, Graham and Norton, bring perfect comic timing to their bumbling attempts to carry out their mother's wishes.
Act One opens with Lola telling the young princess the story of how the king's banished evil sister cast a spell on her as a baby and closes with Princess Rose (ably played by Louise Barry) meeting Prince Christian (charmingly played by Tom McLeod) for the first time as she approaches her 18th birthday. Act Two opens with Rose's 18th birthday, soon to be ruined by sorceress Jealousia's arrival with a spinning wheel, on which Rose pricks her finger and falls into a deep sleep. The tension rises as Christian, Lola and Tickles go in search of a time machine hidden in the forest, hoping to escape into the future to save Princess Rose. After some chasing and a duel, they manage to travel through time. Christian kisses the sleeping princess and everyone returns to the present for the wedding finale.
All in all, the opening night's show provided great festive entertainment, but sadly it lacked the wow factor. It's early days yet, and no doubt there will be wonderful nights ahead, but it did feel like this excellent cast had yet to reach its full potential. And if the Helix is to match the success of rival pantomimes, an enthusiastic and loyal audience must also be built up to infuse the whole theatre with that special panto magic. Until Jan 4
SYLVIA THOMPSON
The Creation
NCH, Dublin
Expectations can be raised very high in the opening of Haydn's massive tour de force for soloists, orchestra and choir, The Creation. It's during the first seven or eight minutes of his devout, biblically based account of "the beginning" that he grabs the attention with a solemn instrumental depiction of what cosmologically came first: chaos. For Haydn, it's not a frantic, boisterous chaos, it's "the void": dark, slow, sinuous and very quiet.
If it's done well, an intense atmosphere builds, so that those high expectations are in place for everything that follows. This was the case at the NCH as principal conductor Gerhard Markson transported a willing audience to the lonely, impersonal expanse of the pre-Genesis, pre-Big Bang universe. High expectations were then met as Markson brought to life Haydn's subtle pictorial representations of nature, as he balanced his forces, and as he showed by his shaping and tempos that the big picture was always in his sights.
Crowning the performance was the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, which emphatically reasserted itself as the benchmark for large choirs here. There seemed to be few, if any, passengers among its 150 singers, so that the collective effect of so much individual responsibility and zeal was one of great power and energy. In imitative passages, entries from all four voice-parts had conviction and presence, tuning was always secure, and there was a ringing unanimity of vowel sounds (although consonants were surprisingly soft-edged). This meant that fast, contrapuntal movements, such as "Awake the harp", had a strong sustained impact and that, for example, the choir's very first, almost-whispered but vitally intense entry with "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" was riveting.
There were three fine soloists. Ailish Tynan revelled with her customary ease in the big demands of soprano movements, such as "On mighty pinions upward soars the eagle proud", though I myself would prefer the fresher, cleaner voice she often uses to the bigger, more sophisticated style she employed here. A late replacement, tenor Ed Lyon was occasionally a little mannered but otherwise sang the part of the angel Uriel with a communicative, baroque-style purity.
The best of the three was Danish bass-baritone Johannes Mannov, who used discerning changes of vocal texture to optimise the expressive strength of his commanding voice in the parts of the angel Raphael and, later, Adam.
MICHAEL DUNGAN
Moscow City Ballet/Cinderella
Helix, Dublin
The excitement in seeing the same ballet time and again lies in discovering each choreographer's twist on the classics. Cinderella, for instance, has been depicted as a tomboy and as a young girl going crazy, and has been whisked away in everything from a pumpkin-turned-carriage to a hot-air balloon.
Moscow City Ballet's Cinderellatakes a fairly traditional approach in this version, glittering with fairies, glass slippers and elegant ball-gowns.
Here the nuances come from the Russians' consummate sense of drama. The histrionics begin as ministers of dance, poetry, music and art enter the king's chambers to organise the upcoming ball, and these caricature-like men serve as foils throughout the proceedings. Ditto the stepsisters and their mother, whose over-the-top arm gestures and facial expressions suggest they are accustomed to playing in larger theatres.
But when Cinderella (Valeria Guseva) appears, wistful and waif-like, all eyes gravitate towards her earnest preparations. With the help of her father and a collection of fairies (who offer some of the most captivating dancing of the evening), she meets her prince and is able to embark on a life of happily-ever-after.
Choreographer Victor Smirnov-Golovanov uses several nifty devices to put his stamp on the fairytale, first using 12 members of the corps de ballet as a kind of human clock. Whenever the time changes, these nefarious characters encircle Cinderella and launch into a primeval dance; then, as if emerging from a time warp, they deposit her into the next scene.
Later, Smirnov-Golovanov sends the prince (Sergiy Zolotaryov) on a worldwide voyage looking for the owner of the glass slipper owner, rather than the usual door-to-door search of the village. As the prince's coterie scour the globe, we meet an Asian princess (Gulnur Sarsenova) and a Spanish one (Yana Cherkashina), whose sultry dancing once again showcases the dramatic Russian style.
Moscow City Ballet and its orchestra presented an admirable production, especially given the limited space on the Helix stage. We sensed that the ballerinas could have stretched their legs even further skyward and that Prokofiev's score could have been interpreted even more lushly, but whatever went missing in breadth was well made up for in emotion.
CHRISTIE SEAVER
Jenkins, RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Inglis
NCH, Dublin
Katherine Jenkins was the featured artist in the last concert of RTÉ's current Signature Series at the NCH. The attractive Welsh mezzo-soprano charmed a capacity audience with a programme of songs drawn from a wide spectrum of light music genres.
We had a Welsh song (naturally), a hymn, a spiritual, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu, numbers from Broadway's My Fair Lady, Music Manand Carousel, as well as pop anthems by Rolf Løvland, Leonard Cohen and Francesco Satori. Rosina's aria from Rossini's Il barbiere di Sivigliawas promised but not delivered. Jenkins did, however, invade tenor territory to round out her programme with Puccini's rousing Nessun dorma.
With everything heavily amplified, it was impossible to gauge the actual size of Jenkins's voice, but it came across as a smoky, if short-breathed, mezzo with an easy soprano-like upper extension. Each of her songs had a single dynamic, generally mezzo-forte, and were delivered via a closely-held hand microphone that obscured some of her words and highlighted a noticeable judder on sustained low notes.
During the concert, Jenkins modelled four stunning evening frocks (her word), read some dedications, dropped a few high-profile showbiz names and chatted amicably with members of her thoroughly captivated audience. Overall, it was an evening of feel-good warmth delivered by an accomplished entertainer.
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra backed the soloist with gusto in a succession of lush orchestrations, flamboyantly but always authoritatively conducted by Anthony Inglis. Between the song groups, he also elicited disciplined playing in thrusting performances of overtures by Nicolai, Weber and Verdi, a Dvorák dance, Rodgers's CarouselWaltz, Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountainand the elder Johann Strauss's popular Radetzky March.
JOHN ALLEN
