Reviewed: La Dernière Bande, Granary Theatre, Cork, White RavenHugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Lyric Opera/SheilNCH, Dublin and Sexton, Douglas, RTÉ NSO/BellincampiNCH, Dublin
La Dernière Bande
Granary Theatre, Cork
Krapp's Last Tape or, as in this production, La Dernière Bande might not seem much of a celebratory offering, but in this performance of Beckett's play, offered to mark the 60th anniversary of Alliance Francaise in Cork, the thrill was in the sense of being close to the master. To two masters, in fact, for actor Pierre Chabert is so renowned as a Beckett exponent and so much at ease with the material that the feeling was of a theatrical collusion in which the audience played a reverential part.
Honed, accomplished and even time-worn as this piece must now be, it is as close to Beckett's own hand as one can get, his hand having provided Chabert with the notes on the script and the insights into the character. A reconnaissance with the past, an audit of the future, this monologue for two voices is characterised by its defiance but also by the power of its silences. These might or might not betoken regret; Chabert holds his own stillness within cones of light, slanted like a Caravaggio, until he enters again the world of the recorded words and his features quake with recognition. It is of course his own voice he is hearing; the difference in tone, in force and in nuance is the drama of the play, a drama extended by the use of an alcove in which a broken song frames his frantic silhouette.
Chabert is a generous performer; a brief further reading was followed by a question-and-answer session in which the youngest member of the audience, possibly in his early teens, asked the first questions and was invited centre-stage to conduct the exchanges with Chabert, which he did with an aplomb at least equal to that of the actor himself - and possibly even to that of Beckett. - Mary Leland
White RavenHugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Macroom-born soprano Kathleen Dineen's day job is at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland where she teaches voice and medieval music performance, two enthusiasms of her student years at UCC.
Since forming her vocal trio White Raven in 2001, Dineen has combined her childhood love of Irish traditional song with the medieval and renaissance music she encountered in college. The result of this union has been Irish song in a sort of 15th century fauxbourdon style, with the two accompanying voices moving in parallel motion with the tune. Critically, Dineen's delicate, unfussy arrangements in this manner are always in keeping with the trio's stated objective of preserving the songs' "original quality and simplicity".
On this occasion most of the material was from Dineen's native Cork. She sampled moods from sorrow to joy to humour with songs such as The Boys of Barr na Sráide, Mo Ghile Mear, I Know My Love By His Way of Walking and Rory Og MacRory. White Raven's hybrid of style and repertoire might attract little attention were it not for the extraordinary quality of their performances. Dineen's soprano is clear like spring water but as warm as sunshine. Her companions - American tenor Robert Getchell and Latvian baritone Raitis Grigalis - are ideal matches. Together they sing with an exceptional unity of blend, shaping, colour and thought, with narrative always in the foreground.
For this concert they were joined by fiddle player Gerry O'Connor. As well as occasional discreet accompaniment in certain songs, O'Connor gave beautifully phrased solos of polkas from Cork, a Breton soldier song - Le Retour de Madagascar - and, from his own north Louth, the intriguing The Chicken's Gone to Scotland. - Michael Dungan
Lyric Opera/SheilNCH, Dublin
Verdi- Nabucco
Lyric Opera specialises in pared-down productions, which it presents on the stage of the National Concert Hall. This performance of Verdi's Nabucco was a departure from the norm; it was a concert performance, with the orchestra placed on the stage rather than on the floor of the hall, and the singers, in concert dress, performing at music-stands in a straight line at the front of the stage. The chorus was arrayed in two rows on risers at the back. The stage direction, credited to Marie Cusack, was minimal. Singers made entries and exits and a few gestures, and there were some changes of lighting, but that was it.
One of the main interests of the evening was the Abigaille of Miriam Murphy, a soprano who's been making waves in recent years, not least by sharing the top prize at Seattle Opera's International Wagner Competition last year, in spite of never having sung a Wagner role on stage. Murphy is one of those singers who seems to have set herself up in firm opposition to soprano Isabel Baillie's creed of never singing louder than lovely. Happily, over the years her voice has developed so that she has become better placed to meet her aspirations. She is now a singer of considerable vocal heft, thrilling in full flight, and fearless, almost reckless, in the scale of effect she is prepared to seek. For all the excitement she can deliver, hers is not by any means the best of temperaments for Verdi. She can be bold and coarse where refinement is called for. Unfortunately, she's unlikely to be heard in Wagner on an Irish stage any time soon.
Overall, the cast was as solid and even a one as I have heard from Lyric Opera, with only the Ismaele of Icelandic tenor Johann Valdimarsson straining in ways that were uncomfortable on the ear. Persian baritone Anooshah Golesorkhi and Georgian bass Ramaz Chikviladze were solid as Nabucco and Zaccaria, and the smaller roles were in the reliable hands of Claudia Boyle (Fenena), John Molloy (the High Priest of Baal), Mary Flaherty (Anna), and Eugene O'Hagan (Abdallo).
The chorus was more enthusiastic than reliable, with the men showing all too frequent signs of strain. The orchestral playing under Fergus Sheil was strong and disciplined. But many of the tempos seemed ridiculously rushed, sounding breathless even when not putting the singers under pressure. There is a case for seeing Nabucco as a stark and elemental score. But Sheil's approach, for all its tightness, suggested less plausibly that it is a thoroughly primitive one, too. Michael Dervan
Sexton, Douglas, RTÉ NSO/BellincampiNCH, Dublin
Bartók - Miraculous Mandarin Suite. Beethoven - Violin Romances, Coriolan Overture. Bartók - Piano Concerto No 2
The Italian conductor Giordano Bellincampi made an auspicious debut with the RTÉ National Orchestra in January 2005. On that occasion his handling of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique was nothing short of sensational, in the best possible meaning of that word. Bellincampi, who turned 40 two years ago and is currently general music director of the Aarhus-based Den Jyske Opera, was booked for a further three concerts on the basis of that appearance, and this was his first .
His programme was unusual in shape - the concerto placed at the end, and solo pieces in the first half, too -as well as in content, with two heavy-duty works by Bartók framing much shorter pieces by Beethoven. If it were to work at all, it would have to work not so much on the basis of balance but rather as one good thing after another. And that's more or less how it went.
The high point was Barry Douglas's performance of Bartók's Second Piano Concerto of 1931, the toughest and most pianistically challenging of the composer's three solo concertos for his own instrument. As a performer, Bartók was a player in the romantic mould, and his recordings show him frequently splitting chords between the hands in his own work as well as in music from the 19th century.
Douglas didn't take that kind of liberty. But he contoured the pounding, parallel chords of the solo writing with an awareness of harmonic weight rather than just concentrating on the percussive impact. He brought a humanising touch to a piece that is often delivered in machine-like mode.
There was no lack of vehemence when it was called for, and the delivery of the fleet Presto which interrupts the central slow movement was electrifying. The evening opened with the suite from Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, a sleazy pantomime of seduction under duress, robbery and murder. The music is as garish as its subject matter is dark, and Bellincampi conveyed it with edgy sharpness and plenty of impact.
The Callino Quartet's new leader, Sarah Sexton, was the soloist in Beethoven's two Romances for violin and orchestra. She handled them with a welcome unsugared clarity in a style which reflected her work with period instruments.
Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, which opened the second half, was delivered with an expressive force which was impressively easy and natural in movement and emphasis. - Michael Dervan
