Irish Times reviewers report from three recent musical events:
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Jansons
NCH, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Debussy - Images. Brahms - Symphony No 1
Performances of Debussy's three Images for orchestra, either in whole or in part, are a real rarity in Ireland. So the opportunity offered in the opening concert of the new Sunday Times International Orchestral Series to hear an orchestra as distinguished as Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw in the complete work was a more than welcome one.
Conductor Mariss Jansons made his control of detail clear from the very start, highlighting selected points with the care, precision and delicacy of a painter who has made a speciality of the light but telling brush stroke.
It was strange, then, that in one of Debussy's most overly colourful orchestral works, the whole turned out to be so much less than the sum of its parts.
For all the gorgeous allure of the orchestra's sound, there was something that didn't quite gell in the weighting of the rhythmic sway and swagger. And while there was plenty of heat generated in Ibéria (which, in Jansons's unexplained re-ordering of the music came last rather than in the middle) the experience for the audience was actually rather a cool one - Debussy delivered with meticulous finesse, but somehow also at a distance.
Brahms's First Symphony is an altogether more straightforward proposition, a work that is robustly dependable in the face of a wide range of interpretative approaches. Jansons's carefully measured commitment here yielded far richer dividends, and there was an expressive ardency in the woodwind-playing that was a pleasure in itself.
The audience's responses made clear how much more it appreciated the Brahms, and the calculated, high-gloss, virtuoso-orchestra-in-top-gear approach to two encores went down even better.
Electric Picnic
Stradbally Estate, Co Laois
Peter Crawley
It is a brand new day at Electric Picnic, the first experience of this "boutique" outdoor music festival as a two-day event. This was always going to feel tentative; Sunday's picnic basket doesn't quite have the crackle of Saturday's line-up with its contemporary electronics, its electric current. Even the day seems noncommittal, a smoke coloured horizon over a sighing breeze.
You have to admire The Redneck Manifesto, then, for their energetic performance if nothing else. The problem with the sinuous time changes, fastidious melodies, and unbearable ponderousness of post-rock is that no matter how much fun The Redneck Manifesto try to have with it, the majority of their crowd will frown back importantly, as though trying to discern the face of Christ in an oil stain.
A more sinful pleasure could have awaited us in the shape of Róisín Murphy - only the shape of Róisín Murphy never materialises. She has cancelled, for reasons that are never revealed, and so too have other hot tips, punk revivalists The Rakes and garage rock kids The Subways.
The crowd shrugs, consults their bootlegged schedules, and moves on to the feelgood reggae of Toots and the Maytals where Toots Hibbert's call and response through Monkey Man gets them bouncing around as vigorously as the tripping hi-hats.
Such a mid-afternoon jolt is precisely what Electric Picnic needs - a surge on the power grid - otherwise the music festival would have been overshadowed by countless boutique stalls offering strap-on angel wings or incense sticks that dizzily promise "psychic enhancement, mystical understanding and divine connection". And yet the indispensable accessory of the weekend is a giant bubble dispenser, shooting out iridescent blobs from a plastic sword.
Floating around LCD Soundsystem, the hipster's electroclash group of choice, these bubbles hover and pop through the bracing clatter of Beat Connection and the funky squelch of Daft Punk is Playing at My House.
Further proof of the resilience in 1980s nostalgia then arrives when Don't You Want Me concludes The Human League's effervescent set. Susanne Sully sings her "waitress-made-good" lyrics the way you expect - hand on hip, no-nonsense scowl - but the hazard of this electro-endorphin rush is that the sated audience trickle out when the song ends. Phil Oakey is forced to chase after them with his immediate encore: a stark Being Boiled and a joyous Electric Dreams.
The diversions of Adam Hills in the comedy tent, the Glastonbury cabaret of Lost Vagueness or screenings of DiG! in the Cinema mean it is entirely possible to enjoy Electric Picnic without having to sully oneself with music. But how could you ignore the kaleidoscopic visuals, eccentric beats and dusty samples of Lemon Jelly? Or opt-out of the neo-psychedelic glory of Mercury Rev?
Indeed, the dizzy effect of Jonathan Donahue's symphonic command on Opus 40, Goddess on a Hiway, Holes and The Dark is Rising are scented deeply with psychic enhancement, mystical understanding and divine connection.
The closing moments of Electric Picnic become the most perversely diverse. For all the sheeny synth pop and halcyon surrounds, someone thought it wise to give arch miserabilists Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds the headline slot.
Now, a harrowing, demonic tumult of doom, fire and brimstone is certainly not without its charms, but as terrified girls close their eyes, hug their boyfriends and think of James Blunt, one wonders if old Nick has simply been hired to clear the grounds.
The positive kick of De La Soul's hip-hop and 2 Many DJ's pummelling set absorb their share of musical refugees and in the night sky another enormous bubble drifts high above. People smile up at it. On a good-humoured Sunday night, it feels like the electric dreams of this little enclosed community could last forever. And then, finally, the music ends and the bubble bursts.
Sean Nós Meets the Blues
Áras Chrónán, Clondalkin
Siobhán Long
It's an intriguing proposition: tracing the rivulets that might connect two disparate traditions. The blues have never made any apologies for the depth of emotion that underpins them, and neither has the sean nós singing tradition. Both are rooted in a place where there were few buffers against life's tribulations.
Dermot Rooney is an astounding bottleneck blues guitarist. His style, influenced by the playing of Blind Willie Johnson, is marked by a modesty and an attention to the fine detail that sets him apart. Rooney's delicate phrasing and pin-prick arrangements pay certain homage to the masters: Leadbelly, Blind Willie McTell and his beloved Blind Willie Johnson.
Mary Ryan promised to bring the sean nós of the title to the mix, but it was a misleading bill of trading she offered. Her voice is a refined, crystalline instrument that tackled many of the blues songs, most particularly, Mary Don't You Weep, with gusto, but her handling of the Irish traditional repertoire was much closer to folk than to sean nós singing.
Gone were the subtle embellishments that are crucial to such stalwarts as Bean Pháidín and Bríd Óg Ní Mháille, and in their stead was a formidable, emotionally-charged reading that highlighted the storyline, at the expense of the lyrical nuance.
This was particularly evident on Bruach Na Carraige Báine. Instead of attempting to lure the guitar in its wake, she pursued its blues lines slavishly, jettisoning the subtle mysteries of the song's roots along the way.
Ryan's relationship with the blues is a much happier one. From the opening gospel verve of Washington Phillips' Denomination Blues to the lonesome Mother's Children, she delves deep beneath the surface, and unearths a reading that's all her own. Her take on Leadbelly's Good Morning Blues was equally idiosyncratic, as she exerted a glorious hold it.
Rooney's solo guitar work was magnificent. His bold composition, Brethren, a tribute to the trailblazing activities of Irish-language activists in Belfast in the late 1960s and early 1970s could easily have had its DNA drawn from the Mississippi delta, and like all self-respecting blues guitarists, he duly offered a pristine, driving instrumental to match the finest "train" blues standards.
His encyclopaedic knowledge of the blues occasionally peeped through, but was regrettably stifled by his own shyness.
His reading of Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was The Night was a highlight, its bones unpicked of their flesh, and each chord stretched wide so that we could almost touch the open space in between. This was a cap-doffing to the great Ry Cooder that didn't go unnoticed.
A night of many highs and a few lows. Ryan and Rooney would do well to examine how masters such as Cooder have truly explored places where traditions intersect. This was essentially a first attempt to begin that process of discovery.
