Reviews

Irish Timesreviewers head to Cork to check out the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, The Decoratorand The Flaming Lips

West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Bantry House, Co Cork

This was the premiere of Ian Wilson's re:play, the second of this year's new works at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. It's a septet that brings together an improvising saxophonist (Cathal Roche), a pianist (Hugh Tinney), a double bassist (Malachy Robinson) and a string quartet (the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet).

Wilson lists the sources of inspiration as Roche's saxophone playing and lines from Samuel Beckett's Play, which the composer mined "for melodic and rhythmic material". The process may sound abstract, but the results are anything but dry.

The music is rhythmically giddy, and the use of microtones to explore between the cracks of conventional scales helps to create a floating, almost light-headed effect. Think of an atmosphere that's at once everyday and familiar, but also disorientingly different, like those peculiarly heightened versions of reality that certain film directors create so well - think David Cronenberg or David Lynch. In Wilson's world there are whiffs of nightclubs, of Astor Piazzolla, suggestions of Conlon Nancarrow, and this droll and slippery piece, which seemed as much fun to play as it was to listen to, also makes a feature of weaving comfortably in and out of improvisation.

The day began with string quartets, some Haydn, routinely done by the Quatuor Terpsycordes, who then offered a quietly glowing account of Ravel's Quartet in F. They ended with a youthful folly by Paul Hindemith, entitled, in the English translation, Overture to the Flying Dutchman as Played at Sight by a Second-Rate Concert Orchestra at the Village Well at Seven O'Clock in the Morning. The Terpsycordes tuned before playing (ahem!), and shirked a lot of the genuine challenges, which is somewhat like an having to play the part of an actor acting badly, something which is not helped by any kind of extra hamming.

Liza Ferschtman and Finghin Collins offered afternoon performances of two lesser 19th-century sonatas, by Grieg and Saint-Saëns. They played with passion and expressive underlining, rather than the kind of free-flowing, self-renewing lyrical narrative that's needed to steer them away from bombast. There were beautiful and touching vocal performances from Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten in Spohr's nicely-turned Sechs deutsche Lieder with clarinet and piano (a magic-weaving Sharon Kam, and an ever-sensitive Finghin Collins), and Russian mezzo soprano Mila Shkirtil and pianist Yuri Serov, who probed with dignity the anguish, regret and innocence of a selection of songs by Tchaikovsky.

Elisabeth Leonskaja joined the Cuarteto Casals for an illuminating account of Schumann's Piano Quintet. It was delicate, fiery, fresh and wise, with everyone willing to defer or dominate as the fullest expression of the music required. The festival continues until Sun Michael Dervan

The Decorator, Cork Opera House

Gallant performances from three stars of stage, screen and television make some sense of Donald Churchill's otherwise nonsensical play The Decorator. Leslie Grantham is the hero of this piece, as a failed actor making a living by painting other people's houses, among them that of a woman involved in an adulterous affair which is about to be revealed to her husband. What failed actors do, it seems, is over-act, and Grantham obliges with more enthusiasm than subtlety, working himself into a parody combining, for example, Noel Coward, the Goon Show and Othello.

It says little indeed for Churchill that the decorator's best laughs come from his inability to remember names, and it says a lot for Grantham that he is able to construct a comedy from Churchill's light, indeed almost empty hand at a script. The porous writing gives Sarah Manners, as the wronged wife, and Sabina Franklyn, as the wronging wife, little to do, and even that they do with their voices pitched just below hysteria, as they display the mania afflicting people who live too close to Harrods.

Ian Dickens's direction keeps a lively pace going and the performances are as smooth and confident as should be expected from any good repertory company, which in this case is blessed by an excellent set. The Decoratoris the first production in a three-week visit by the UK company Ian Dickens Productions, which will include Dead Guiltyby Richard Harris next week and JB Priestley's Dangerous Cornerfrom July 17. Runs until Sat Mary Leland

The Flaming Lips, Marquee, Cork

"We're just normal guys trying to make interesting music" - so proclaimed Mr Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, in 2001. I'm no psychiatrist, but it seems to me that the antics at a Flaming Lips concert are about as customary as a Buddha in a brothel.

Beforehand, the band stroll about the stage fixing props, inflating balloons and carefully unpacking their musical toys. All the while, roadies dressed in red boiler suits dart around the crowd handing out red lasers, which provide endless entertainment for the audience. Coyne gives careful instruction on how to use the lasers, before entering a giant plastic sphere and bouncing his way over the first 10 rows. Up to 20 dancers in Santa costumes colonise stage right, while futuristic looking females assume positions on stage left. Visuals, smokescreens, flashing lights, close-ups and costumes make up the rest of the stage. Bit of a different vibe to Status Quo, then.

It's difficult to separate the spectacle from the sound. Leaning heavily for the opening part on material from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, including an infectious rendition of the title track, the music was somehow scrambling, or, at least, straining for notice amid the mayhem. But perhaps that's the point. The Brechtian nature of their performance invites participation, removing tricks in favour of naked theatrics. Mercury Rev certainly bought into it, judging by the slow, intense pickings from At War With the Mystics, casting both acts from the same gene pool. By the time the band got round to The Yeah Yeah Yeah Songand Do You Realise?,via a stop-start take on Lionel Richie's Truly, vocals were a little crisper, yet still lacked any real edge. A cover of the Rolling Stones' Moonlight Mileprovided the encore, with the refrain "just another mad, mad day on the road", particularly appropriate. Brian O'Connell