Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events
Foo Fighters
Marlay Park, Dublin
Laurence Mackin
All summer, the Irish crowd has been waiting for this gig. Not because of the calibre of the bands on show, though that can't be doubted, but for that rarest event in the Irish musical calendar: an outdoor rock concert with the sun spilling through the trees, when T-shirts, rather than rain gear, are the clothing of choice.
A glorious evening set the tone for what promised to be a glorious Bud Rising concert. Slane Castle might be more iconic, and attract brighter stars, but Marlay Park must be one of the finest outdoor musical venues in the country. With the Dublin mountains as a dramatic backdrop, and a gentle slope meaning nearly every spot is a decent vantage point, it is hard to find fault with this most suburban of rock'n'roll parks.
Foo Fighters have a strong live reputation, but Nine Inch Nails wasted no time in ripping through their own set, setting a blistering pace for the evening and even smashing a few guitars in some old-fashioned rock theatrics.
The mood of the crowd was infectious, and for once it wasn't mainly the golden stuff in plastic cups that had everyone smiling, but the sunny stuff falling from the sky. As the light failed, lead man Dave Grohl strolled on stage, looking like a lost tourist, and got things rolling on his own with Everlong. The band joined for the last furious verse and from there the pace barely slacked for a moment.
Foo Fighters are polished as chrome on record, and though their heart is made of rock, it is matched with a razor-sharp ear for hooks and riffs that have kept many a festival-goer bouncing for hours on end. Their back catalogue seems built for summer festivals, and live they inject each track with a furious energy that most metal bands would be proud of, attacking every song like it's their last.
My Hero, Monkey Wrenchand Times Like These (One Way Motorway)hum and crackle on record, but live they broil and ruck, pound and grapple.
As Dave Grohl explains, this is the band's last date of their current tour. Grohl's voice is on the ragged side of rough ("though far be it from me to cancel a gig because of a sore throat", he says - other, more precious singers take note), and as the set goes on, the band seem to take slightly longer than expected to launch into the next track.
But this is an absolute fiend of a gig, ripped through at break-neck speed, full of stylish aggression and infectious energy, and the perfect accompaniment to our one-day summer.
McNamara, RTÉ CO/Maloney
NCH, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Guest conducting with the RTE Concert Orchestra for this lunchtime concert was Gavin Maloney, who occupies the training position of assistant conductor with the RTÉ NSO.
Here he encountered challenges wholly different from those presented by the large-scale works he tackled with the NSO last January. Typically, his one-hour lunchtime programme packed in eight pieces, all by different composers, mostly extracts from stage works, and ranging from the light and fluffy (By the Sleepy Lagoonby Coates) to music that ran rather deeper, including excerpts from Sibelius's haunting incidental music to Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande.
Notable among Maloney's best qualities on this occasion was the restraint he exercised.
He never allowed the languorous Coates to stagnate, and in Grainger's Irish Tune from the County Derry(aka Danny Boy), he firmly and thankfully resisted the temptation to sentimental over-kill.
He might have loosened the restraint more in the Sibelius, which ended up rather four-square and emotionally flat. He wasn't helped by RTÉ's new cost-cutting printed programmes, little more than an advertising flyer with the titles of the pieces on the back. The 20 minutes of extracts from the Sibelius, in the middle of an otherwise short-works programme, really needed a bit of context.
Nor did the programme tell you anything about the guest soloist, tenor Paul McNamara, who sang arias by Weber, Leoncavallo and Lehár. McNamara, Limerick-born but now making his living in opera in Berlin, out of nowhere manufactured the emotional high-point of the concert with his moving account of "Vesti la Giubba" from Leoncavallo's I pagliacci.
Redmond O'Toole
John Field Room, NCH, Dublin
Michael Dungan
D Scarlatti- Sonata in D minor (K213). Bach- Lautensuite BWV 997. Rodrigo- Invocation y Danza. Giuliani- Rossiniana No 1
Guitarist Redmond O'Toole reduced his audience to a sustained pin-drop silence with the first forlorn, delicate notes of his opening piece, a D minor sonata(K213) by Domenico Scarlatti.
So exquisite were music and playing that the novelty of O'Toole's instrument - the eight-string "Brahms guitar" which he plays in the cello position and with a wooden resonating box - presented only the briefest, passing distraction.
In printed notes, offering a rare, readable mix of insight and informal discussion, O'Toole described how he first heard the sonata (on harpsichord) in a drawing-room scene from the film Marie Antoinette, which was released earlier this year. Reckoning it a gem, he transcribed it. He was right.
His notes also outline some intriguing disagreement about his second piece, a "Lautensuite", or literally suite for lute, by Bach. Since the surviving manuscript is in Bach's pupil's hand, can we be sure it was written originally for lute? Or for Lautenwerck, Bach's custom-built harpsichord designed to imitate the lute? In his performance, O'Toole demonstrated how in the end it didn't matter, that what was intended for the sound of the lute would work well in transcription.
Here, as in the Scarlatti, he magically produced distinctive colours for different voices in contrapuntal passages, and he played the slow sarabande, which quotes the final chorus from the St Matthew Passion, with deep, muted intensity.
In Rodrigo's programmatic Invocation y Danza,a homage to the composer's compatriot de Falla, O'Toole brought the narrative of an ill-fated love-triangle colourfully to life and effected the illusion of multiple players as he single-handedly played both dances and accompaniment.
He concluded his recital, which went a long way to selling a niche instrument that exists within the already niche confines of the classical guitar, with a lively, witty performance of Mauro Giuliani's Rossiniana No 1,an affectionate mix of Rossini opera arias and variations upon them.
