Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events

Connolly, Hallé Orchestra/Elder at the NCH, Dublin

Mendelssohn - The Fair Melusine Overture.

Mahler - Rückert Lieder.

Elgar - Symphony No 2.

The celebrations surrounding the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edward Elgar have produced in Ireland just a small crop of performances. Until this week that crop had not included a single performance of either of the composer's symphonies.

So it was entirely apt for Mark Elder, making his NCH debut as principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, to give a spoken introduction to the piece here. He dismissed the often-presented view of the work as the embodiment of the Edwardian age in music - it's dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII, who died during its composition, and the score carries a note stating it was "designed early in 1910 to be a loyal tribute".

Instead he sees the first movement as a character sketch of the composer's intimate friend, Alice Caroline Stuart Wortley, the second as being "about loss", the third as a nightmarish scherzo, "tinged with madness and fury", and the finale as a tribute to the German conductor and great advocate of Elgar's work, Hans Richter.

His conducting of the music was single-mindedly clear, as if he'd set out to trace a distinct line through its complex tapestry, and was downplaying other musical priorities in order to focus on the chosen path. The effect in the third movement was every bit as shivery as he promised, but elsewhere the firm orchestral presentation often felt like a simplification, as if the genuinely cogent path he had found could be achieved only by the denial of important layers of complexity.

The Elgar provided the orchestral highlight of the evening.

Mendelssohn's Fair Melusine Overture was treated like a kind of orchestral padding, and there was little genuine flavour of Mahler evoked in the expressive lines of the Rückert Lieder.

The mezzo soprano soloist Sarah Connolly, on the other hand, was in gorgeous voice, clear in tone, and free in movement throughout the range.

It can't, however, have helped her listeners' experience for the programme to have billed her in her biography as a soprano, for the printed listing of the songs to have differed from the sung order, and for the NCH to have left the audience without any texts and translations for the songs. Michael Dervan

Hoarse Throat Soothers at Bewley's Cafe Theatre

"Is it edgy enough?" asks Shane O'Neill, the "vision guy" to Nick McGinley's "words guy", a pair of advertising "creatives" struggling without the benefits of a "time cushion" to find an advertising campaign worthy of a "lozenge".

This, the first skit of O'Neill and McGinley's self-styled comedy cabaret, establishes a comic rhythm that rarely alters over their next umpteen sketches: a high-energy launch, a galloping race to fever pitch and a climax of such unrestrained physicality it invariably leaves one performer, or the other, or both, sprawled out on the floor.

But is it edgy enough? And, spanning across two acts and about 90 minutes, exactly how many time cushions should a modern sketch show rest on? If anything binds the sketches together - all of them depending on the double act - it's the inspired lunacy of pent-up testosterone, a playfulness that could easily boil over into aggression.

It doesn't quite know where to land its punches though. The follow-up sketch, in which McGinley gets depilatory advice from a gay caricature could milk uneasy laughs from male body anxieties, but settles instead for comedy accents and more screaming. The gags that work best are more subtle, more word than vision: an unexpectedly dark twist in an encounter between a slovenly psychic and a fastidious customer is, thankfully, edgy enough, while a double-act eulogy - "or duelogy" - tones down the leaping mania for a creeping sense of unease.

That certainly suits the small space better - putting high-octane physical comedy in Bewley's Café Theatre is like mounting a firework display in an elevator. But, like all cabaret, Hoarse Throat Soothers could do with more variety. There is a pleasing comfort in the performers, who are so deliberately freewheeling it can be hard to tell when they are following a script or improvising. That also explains the strike rate of the gags, some so hackneyed and gleefully edgeless you laugh in spite of yourself, as when a showbiz flea in spandex announces, "I've got an agent, but she only looks after her big clients". Yuk yuk. Peter Crawley

Sylvia O'Brien, Kate Ellis at Printing House, TCD

Kaija Saariaho - Petals. Lonh.

Andrew Hamilton - Drei Gesänge.

John Tavener - Lament for Phaedra.

The New Sound Worlds series continued with a programme that explored the unusual world of solo cello and soprano.

For the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, scoring seems as important as anything to do with rhythm, melody or anything else.

Petals, for solo cello, is a beautifully crafted, fantasia-like piece based as much on timbre and volume as on anything else.

Much of it is so quiet that the scratch of my pen on paper seemed intrusive. Kate Ellis's playing was always persuasive and alert to Saariaho's finely wrought detail.

The same composer's Lonh sets poems attributed to the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, and uses pre-recorded electronic sounds to create textures in which solo voice and cello seem to inhabit a world far away. The performance was strong and characterful, partly because of Sylvia O'Brien's ability to make her voice cover a wide range of colours and volume.

The concert closed with John Tavener's Lament for Phaedra, a piece that demonstrates the composer's subtle craftsmanship and his tendency towards prolix repetition. The excellent sound engineering by Enda Bates made it sound as if we were listening in a church building - perfect for this piece.

It was preceded by the first performance of Andrew Hamilton's Drei Gesänge, which was written for these players.

This striking piece sets texts from 19th-century German lieder, and takes a gently ironic view of that musical style and materials. It teases the ear with references to things you might just have heard before, and not always in the lied. Although it is completely unafraid of historical references, and of the suggestion of traditional tonality, its way of putting things together is bang up-to-date. There is no finger-pointing parody; but there is much wit and loving homage. Martin Adams