An Irishman's Diary

IT IS ONE of the quirks of freemasonry that while the movement has “sister lodges” and “mother lodges”, actual sisters and mothers are not normally found in either, at least during meetings. Membership is open to people of “any race or religion”, with one key proviso. Possession of a Y-chromosome is still essential.

Which only added to the fascination of a concert at the Freemasons’ Hall in Dublin on Thursday night, involving the brilliant and extremely female English cellist Natalie Clein. The event was part of the Music in Great Irish Houses series, and the hall – a stone’s throw from the gates of the Dáil – certainly fits that billing.

Its open-doors policy of recent years notwithstanding, however, the Freemasons’ Hall still carries the aura of a male secret society (something its spokespeople these days vehemently insist it is not), where in former times at least, men of influence ordered the world.

So there was an undeniable frisson when its VIP guest swept across the carpet of the Grand Lodge Room on Thursday and took up position in front of the grandmaster’s chair.

It’s quite a carpet, by the way. Like much of the hall’s decor, the black and white chess-board design is symbolic, in this case denoting good and evil. But observed from the end of the rectangular room, it produces strange optical illusions, like a Bridget Riley painting. From where I sat on the side benches, it looked as if the floor was corrugated.

Ms Clein began with one of Bach’s suites – “the cellist’s bible” as she called them – while the walls of the great room looked on stoically, carrying references to verses from the non-cellist’s Bible, all relating to construction, eg 1 Kings VI:VII: “And the house was [. . .] built of stone made ready before it was brought thither . . .” Then she was joined by the evening’s co-star, Irish accordionist Dermot Dunne: himself a virtuoso, who elevates his sometimes maligned instrument to the status it has in Eastern Europe, where he has spent years studying.

In a series of stunning collaborations on Bartok and other composers, the two musicians subsequently played off each other like the squares of the carpet, again producing strange but entrancing effects. It was quite a concert.

Although, like me, he meets at least the basic requirements for masonic lodge membership, Mr Dunne was no less a challenge to the surroundings than his partner.

Another of the evening’s highlights was his arrangement of a piece by Astor Piazzolla, the Argentinian composer who modernised tango and turned it into high art (sometimes to the severe annoyance of traditionalists, one of whom – according to Mr Dunne – entered a recording studio where the master was at work once and pointed a gun at his head by way of warning to leave the music alone).

Piazzolla’s experiments with tango had some of the spirit of “Parisian jazz”, according to Thursday’s programme notes. But to the traditional form, he is also said to have added elements of “tragedy, comedy, and whorehouse”. You don’t get a lot of that sort of thing in the Freemasons Hall either, I imagine.

IF SHE WERE A footballer rather than a cellist, Natalie Clein could play for Ireland, under the famous “Granny rule”. She mentioned in passing that her Lithuanian ancestors landed in Cork many years ago before moving on. Which piqued my curiosity.

Having taken part in a tour of Jewish Dublin last year and interviewed the (since sadly departed) fount of all knowledge on the subject, Raphael Siev, I am still passing myself off as an expert.

So I inquired later if, by any chance, Ms Clein’s great-grandparents had been the Solomon and Malka Clein who came from Cork to Dublin a century ago and, as well as rearing a family, founded a kosher bakery in Portobello that was later sold to the Bensons, also Jewish, who then sold it to a man who worked there, called Hackett; who despite not being Jewish, retained the kosher certification and renamed the bakery The Bretzel, as which it still stands today.

And what do you know? Natalie said that, sure enough, there was a “Malka” somewhere in her family tree and, yes, there were bakers. She would have to ask her father for more details, she added. But we agreed it was a small world.

I MENTIONED during the week that the incoming Limerick City Council had a “Long” and a “Shortt”; and how, while a “Fox” and a “Pidgeon” had both contested the elections in Wicklow, one of them (the latter, inevitably) did not survive. Well Jimmy Harte, son of former TD Paddy and himself a councillor in Donegal has since e-mailed with an example from a few decades back that tops either of those.

In the 1960s, apparently, Donegal County Council had both a “Greene” (Charlie, FG) and an “Orange” (Jim, FF). And to complete the tricolour, one of the county’s TDs was “White” (Jim, FG). It is not recorded whether the last-mentioned ever sat between the other two at meetings, symbolising peace. But I like to think it happened, at least once.