Philippe Cassard and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, Dublin is reviewed by Michael Dervan, The Marriageat the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire is reviewed by Gerry Colganand the performance of Gerard Gillen at the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin is attended by Martin Adams
Philippe Cassard RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra National Concert Hall, Dublin
Classical Symphony - Prokofiev. Piano Concerto in E flat K482 - Mozart. Symphony No 104 (London) - Haydn
It was interesting to hear the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra play Prokofiev's Classical Symphony just three weeks after the Vienna Philharmonic had played the same work at the same venue.
The Vienna Philharmonic's performance under Bobby McFerrin was sophisticated and easy-going, so well turned that any hair out of place in ensemble or intonation stood out clearly. The NSO under Gerhard Markson played with a lot more brio but also, by comparison, with hair that was ruffled and even in spots a bit matted.
The early classical style that the 26-year-old Prokofiev was cheekily mimicking is an area of repertoire that has long exposed weaknesses in the NSO's musical approach, and it was that style on which the rest of the programme focused.
The orchestra's tendency here is to adopt a style that's a little larger than life, as if the players are somehow unable to forgo the emotional thrust of Beethoven and later 19th-century music when dealing with Mozart and Haydn. It's as if there's a collective failure to understand how more can become less in this music, just as higher settings for colour, contrast and brightness on a well-adjusted television set are more likely to muddy the picture than to clarify it.
Markson seems content to work within the orchestra's well-worn habits rather than set about redefining them. His approach in Mozart's Piano Concerto in E flat, K482, and Haydn's London Symphony was robust and thrusting. There was no lack of energy, but clarity was often lost when instruments with subsidiary material allowed their presence to challenge the melodic lines that needed to stand clearly in the foreground.
Philippe Cassard, the soloist in the Mozart, must have given himself quite a fright with a misjudged leap in his first entry. But, unfazed by this slip, he went on to offer an account of the music that was altogether more successfully balanced in expression than the orchestral playing that accompanied it. Michael Dervan
The Marriage
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
A rarely seen play by Nikolai Gogol comes with intrinsic appeal, but it must be said that this touring production, by Broadway Productions from London, does much to dilute it.
It is a comedy of manners and customs in which a woman matchmaker finds five suitors for a young lady.
The men are an imaginative slice of society: an effete bachelor, a wimpish aristocrat, a retired army officer, a government clerk and a rustic swain. The object of their desire and greed is middle class, with a dowry to match. At the end, after much frantic courting, the whole enterprise falls through.
There is obvious potential for comedy there, provided that the characters keep at least one foot in the real world. We laugh more heartily at the recognisable, at the hit to our own frailty in the shape of the funny bone.
The treatment here is one of exaggerated farce, a manifest nonsense.
Absurdly shrill voices, juddery movement, Siamese-twin maids, manic movement created by strobe lighting and surreal happenings - heads popping out of the furniture, a flying penis - run out of steam very soon and create an inappropriate ambience of mugging the audience for laughs.
The production is not a total write-off, as Gogol's comic energy insists on peeping through. But it is fair to call it a disappointment. Gerry Colgan
Gerard Gillen
Pro-Cathedral, Dublin
Grand Dialogue (Book 3) - Marchand. Pastorale - Franck. Postlude Pour L'Office De Complies - Alain. Mariales - Naji Hakim. Prélude Triste - Terry de Valera, Fugue Sur Le Théme Du Carillon Des Heures De La Cathédrale De Soissons - Duruflé
The Pro-Cathedral's annual series of organ recitals ended here, with a programme showing good judgment and a pleasing succession of subtle contrasts. Gerard Gillen, the cathedral's titular organist, played mainly French music - as he said, the kind this instrument does particularly well.
Sharp-toned reeds suited the massive, baroque textures of Marchand's Grand Dialogue. From then until the concluding piece, Duruflé's Fugue Sur Le Théme Du Carillon Des Heures De La Cathédrale De Soissons, we heard music of the quieter kind.
That simple idea worked surprisingly well, partly because it explored three linked strands of musical style. Like most French baroque organ music, the Marchand is rooted in the tradition of improvisation around a plainsong melody. Franck's Pastorale is an early example of the symphonic-organ character piece. Those two traditions come together in Alain's Postlude Pour L'Office De Complies and in Mariales, a set of five colourful pieces by Naji Hakim, the Lebanese-born, French-trained composer and successor to Messiaen as organist at La Trinité in Paris.
The impact of the Duruflé was heightened by coming after the deeply felt melodiousness of Prélude Triste, Terry de Valera's memorial to his late wife, Phyllis.
This was a quietly assured recital. The meditative central part came across well, partly because one could hear subtle details of part-writing - beautifully clear in the Hakim in particular.
The extrovert power of the opening
and closing works was captured, but in a natural way that let the music speak for itself. Martin Adams
