Reviews today include Schilli at the NCH, Dublin, Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio K498, Piano Quartet in G minor K478 also at the NCH, a traditional music and culture festival in Temple Bar, and the Limerick Trilogy at Daghdha's Church, Limerick
Schilli, RTÉ NSO/Markson NCH, Dublin
Wolfgang von Schweinitz - Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op 12.
Mozart - Oboe Concerto in C K314. Mass in C K317 (Coronation).
This concert, which took place on Mozart's 250th birthday, included the finest oboe playing I have heard since Heinz Holliger, around 20 years ago. Stephan Schilli was the soloist in the Oboe Concerto in C K314, which was a lost work, but has been reconstructed from the composer's own well-known arrangement, the Flute Concerto in D K314.
Schilli's playing epitomised virtuosity without obvious effort. It was no surprise to hear the oboe's tone bringing an edge to a work that, in its more familiar form, tends to sound pretty. However, it was unexpected that the changed timbre, allied to Schilli's strong shaping and superb musicianship, should give the whole work such sinuosity and power.
Wolfgang von Schweinitz's Variations on a Theme by Mozart Op 12 was written in 1976, when the composer was about 23. It is the sort of thing one does when young - take an impressive, colourful idea (in this case from Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music) and respond to it by doing more of the same in your own voice.
The problem is that variation technique is at its best when applied to simple ideas.
In this piece, the technical flair and superficial sensuality of the new cannot escape the shadow of the extraordinary original.
Mozart's Coronation Mass K317 featured a well-balanced group of soloists - Virginia Kerr, Deirdre Coolin-Nolan, Robin Tritschler and Nigel Williams, with the National Chamber Choir and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in strong, responsive form. This was a well-defined performance, sure of what it wanted to achieve and secure in delivery.
The tempi set by Gerhard Markson were often fast, very fast in the Credo especially; and sometimes the orchestra was a bit too loud for a choir of this size. Nevertheless, the performance made an invigorating end to a satisfying concert.
Martin Adams
Collins, Finucane, d'Arcy, Lynch, Drury-Byrne, John Field Room, NCH, Dublin
Mozart - Kegelstatt Trio K498, Piano Quartet in G minor K478.
On Mozart's 250th birthday, the box office potential of his chamber music was considerably underestimated at the National Concert Hall. Dozens queued for tickets, but in vain: with the main auditorium set up for the evening's orchestral concert, the sold-out lunchtime recital went ahead as scheduled in the 250-seat John Field room.
Programmes too were in short supply. The sumptuous booklet covering both events of the NCH's Mozart celebration must have sold more copies than expected the previous evening, for its place was taken by last-minute photocopies.
On the programme, thanks to the imagination of pianist Dearbhla Collins, were two complementary works. The G-minor quartet for piano and strings encompassed the extremes of a severe first movement and a blissful finale, while the E-flat trio for the rarer and more nonchalant combination of piano, clarinet and viola confined itself to a more moderate emotional middle ground.
Against Collins's balanced and studious piano accompaniment, John Finucane's elegant clarinet-playing was effortlessly connected or articulated as the music required. Though there was an impersonal feel to much of the quartet's passage work, John Lynch endowed the trio's viola part with plenty of character, particularly in the figurative and conversational aspects of the minuet and the finale.
But these are vague and incomplete impressions. With a packed house, the critics were exiled to the mezzanine gallery, whose frontal screen is better for looking through than for listening through. It's not the best place from which to judge a performance.
Andrew Johnstone
Lassus Scholars, Piccolo Lasso, Williams, Orlando Chamber Orchestra/O'Donovan NCH, Dublin
Born 200 years and a day after Mozart himself, Ite O'Donovan is one of his most tenacious Irish devotees. She celebrated his 250th anniversary, her own 50th, and her choir's 10th with a bumper concert of his choral and orchestral music.
The first of several all-Mozart events being staged by her Dublin Choral Foundation this year, it was also the launch pad for the foundation's new CD of three of his best-loved Masses, and for a new €1,000 award for choral singing at the Siemens Feis Ceoil named the Ite O'Donovan Prize - a birthday honour from her choristers.
O'Donovan's regular team of soloists - Franzita Whelan and Imelda Drumm (sopranos), Anthony Kearns (tenor) and Jeffrey Ledwidge (bass) - formed an effective quartet in the slight but charming Regina Caeli K276. In the solos and duets of the much more imposing Mass in C minor K427, both sopranos met the formidable challenges of range and agility with vigour.
The opening Allegro of the D major Violin Concerto K218 tended to press on at moments when flexibility might have clarified the phrasing.
In the Andante, however, soloist Gillian Williams projected the melodies with a nice vibrato. Here, neither she nor the orchestra allowed the lyricism to flag.
Augmented by the junior voices of Piccolo Lasso, the youthful top line of the Lassus Scholars relished the repeated high notes and elaborate passage work of the Mass.
Though their impact was much reduced in some of the movements for double chorus, the choirs packed a punch at the opening of the Sanctus.
But it was in the breezy Te Deum K141 that voices, instruments and music combined with the most success. With sprightly singing, a light accompaniment and no-nonsense direction, this was an optimal experience of classical church music in the concert room.
Andrew Johnstone
Traditional music and culture festival, Temple Bar, Dublin
If there were any doubts about whether Dublin's city centre harbours an appetite for traditional music, then this year's inaugural Temple Bar Trad Irish Music & Culture Festival scuppered them with gusto. Throughout the weekend, the twin venues of the Temple Bar Music Centre and the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre on Foster Place reverberated with the sound of musical notes colliding and punters jostling for enough space to at least tilt their pelvises in time.
The festival's decision to lure the long-dispersed Skara Brae back together was an inspired piece of programming on Thursday's opening night. Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Micheál Ó Domhnaill and Daithí Sproule reignited as if they'd only strayed momentarily from a repertoire which, when originally recorded in 1971, set pulses beating erratically with its intricate harmonies and guitar-line tapestries.
Maighread is still the fulcrum of the quartet, her soaring vocals countered with pristine accuracy by Tríona's throaty harmonies, with Micheál fulfilling the essential third part in their elaborate triangular communion. Suantraí Hiúdaí, An Saighdiúir Tréighthe and Inis Dhún Rámha were as fresh-faced and sprightly as they were over three decades ago.
Before them, Noel Hill made an exultant return to Dublin, with an effervescent set that tested his mettle, and tickled the eardrums of his audience.
Open in his gratitude for the unconditional cluas na heisteachta of his audience, he stilled the room with a glorious set that swept elements of Caoineadh Luimní and Dr Gilbert's Reel into the ether with the dextrous agility of a gymnast on top form.
Tommy Peoples is a Donegal fiddler who's already entered the pantheon of the great.
To this reviewer's surprise, he opened Saturday night's proceedings, and so his set was missed, thanks to the parking tribulations that prevented us from reaching our seats until Leitrim fiddler Andy Morrow and Limerick concertina maestro Tony O'Connell took to the stage, in the superb company of guitarist Arty McGlynn.
This was a set that promised much, and delivered more. Morrow's fiddle was initially too tied to the scaffolding of the tunes to find its true voice, but once the trio hit the belly of the hornpipe the Drunken Sailor, all fetters were jettisoned. O'Connell eked a gorgeous woody tone from his concertina, a magnificent force and a musical personality all his own.
Seán Tyrrell rounded off the night with a sociably eclectic mix of songs and tunes, using his mandocello and guitar for maximum impact on the Coast of Malabar, the Sad Gypsy and the Blue Green Bangle. His voice is his essential calling card, not so much laden, as sustained by the jaded riches of a life lived to the full.
A long weekend of fine music, and a formidable start to an event that whispers of much more to come.
Siobhán Long
Limerick Trilogy, Daghdha's Church, Limerick
Composer Igor Stravinsky once remarked how churches restricted his compositions, claiming, "you can't commit musical sins in a church".
But deconsecrated churches have been linked with some of dance's most important sins by providing sanctuary for choreographers to stray from devoutly held movement canons. New York's Judson Church gave a space and eventually a moniker to a collection of post-modernists in the 1960s and Daghdha Dance Company's new dance home in Limerick (formerly Church of St John of the Cross) is now providing a similarly apposite venue in which to view the works of artistic director Michael Klien.
This setting is important. Klien credits himself with the choreography and the dancers with the dance. His function is not to invent movement for bodies but to construct a choreographic system that allows those bodies to find their own movement. In the case of Limerick Trilogy - Fat, Dust and Mud, the stimuli for the dancers are as diverse as a poem by Ciaran O'Driscoll and everyday memories of the past two years living in Limerick. Even in the theatre there is never more than the lightest dab of greasepaint on Klien's choreography and St John's bare surroundings and clinically-white floor is an almost perfect canvas. It demands a different way of watching where, seated on benches surrounding the dancers, you feel part of the process itself.
The result could be indigestible waffle, but the three dancers (Davide Teringo, Angie Smalis and Nicole Peisl) are fluent with Klien's methodologies. There may be the inevitable moments of looser energy or uncertain interactions, but the scaffold of the choreographic system mean there is no improvisational meandering. As creators and instigators of every movement, there is an earnestness and truthfulness behind every action. At the end, we are left with an empty performing area and the generous silent spaces in Volkmar Klien's music give way to more energised voicings.
Looking at a blank canvas again it seemed that, although most movement was completely abstract, the dancers had still confided a highly personal and professional account of their relationship with Limerick.
Michael Seaver
