Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events.
Vogler String Quartet
St Stephen's Church, Dublin
Mozart - Quartet in C K157.
Schumann - Quartet in F,
Op 41 No 2. Beethoven - Quartet in E flat, Op 127.
MICHAEL DERVAN
The Vogler String Quartet is within a couple of months of celebrating the 20th anniversary of its first performance in Ireland. That Irish debut, presented at the Edmund Burke Theatre by the Limerick Music Association and the TCD School of Music, paved the way for a residency in Sligo and the establishing of the Vogler Spring Festival at St Columba's Church, Drumcliffe, which takes place every May.
The quartet's Dublin appearance was not, however, a matter of simple celebration. The group has lost a close friend. Doreen Ruddock, wife of Limerick Music Association's musically tireless John Ruddock, passed away last month, and the quartet's leader, Tim Vogler, not only dedicated the concert to her, but offered a poignant encore in her memory, the Cavatina from Beethoven's Quartet in B flat, Op 130.
The afternoon's programme had the appearance of normality, but actually offered something quite different. Mozart's Quartet in C, K157, is a rarely heard work, early and immature, and was here offered with infectious zest.
Schumann's Quartet in F, Op 41 No 2, is the work of a man usually classified as romantic. But in juxtaposition with Beethoven's late Quartet in E flat, Schumann's quartet writing can sound constrained, even straitlaced.
The Voglers played the Beethoven with a straightness which, if anything, highlighted the music's remarkable weaving together of the sublime and the strange in ways that conveyed its flow of thought with the unpredictability of a musical stream of consciousness. The afternoon may have been laced with sadness, but the musical delivery was thoroughly stimulating.
David Lyttle Group/Greg Osby
JJ Smyth's, Dublin
RAY COMISKEY
It is a measure of the regard in which the great US alto saxophonist Greg Osby is held that his Dublin concert, at the end of a short Irish tour with the David Lyttle Group, posted "house full" signs early on and latecomers had to be turned away. Supported by Dublin's Improvised Music Company and Belfast's Moving On Music, the tour had provided the quintet with four concerts prior to its appearance in the capital, and time to get acquainted musically.
The results were full of intelligent and accomplished blowing by all concerned, with the blend of Osby's alto and Michael Buckley's muscular tenor very effective on theme statements. The music - with Justin Carroll (piano), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass) and Lyttle (drums) providing a solidly responsive rhythm section - was approached with a high seriousness which never lost its sense of focus throughout the evening.
Perhaps it was this which left a sense that, as well as everyone performed, some slight spark to lift the performance to another level was missing. Much of the material was originals by Lyttle, with a couple from Osby, so what was done with it was less readily appreciated than it would be with more familiar pieces.
Certainly, one of the most absorbing moments of the evening came from the radical dissection of Nature Boy, the sole standard played. In Osby's arrangement, it opened with a lengthy, oblique piano introduction, which resolved into the theme from flute and rhythm, before marvellous solos from alto, piano and bass - and superb rubato playing - over Lyttle's acutely responsive drums, showed what this quintet was capable of.
Paradoxically, Thelonious Monk's gentle Ask Me Now saw the quintet come closest to what might, in relative terms, be called straight-ahead playing. But that was an effective contrast to what preceded it: Osby's knotty, convoluted Vertical Hold, which allowed for some of the most liberated soloing. Overall, these relative extremes set the parameters for a concert which pushed the boundaries, but good as it was, seemed generally content to maintain their shape. Maybe I expected too much.
