The Tycho Brahe in Whelan's in Dublin is reviewed by Ed Power and Martin Adams reviews both McGonnell, Collins in the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray and Redmond O'Toole (cello-guitar) at the NCH, Dublin
The Tycho Brahe
Whelan's, Dublin
Ed Power
"Ethereal" is a word most of us stopped using when the 1980s petered out. Having endured the otherworldly soundscapes and cultivated introspection of groups such as the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine for the best part of a decade, record buyers eventually grew wary of music that had begun to sound suspiciously like the artistic equivalent of sulking in your bedroom.
So it's probably of mixed blessing to The Tycho Brahe (essentially a reincarnation of fondly-regarded Dublin three-piece The Plague Monkeys) that, grasping for an adjective appropriate to their fey, brooding indie-rock, one reaches instinctively for - you guessed it - "ethereal".
Doubling as a launch party for the band's labyrinthine second album, Love Life, this concert revealed a group previously overshadowed by its influences in the process of forging a fresh and distinctive sound. Although traces of the Cocteau Twins, in particular, are still discernible, The Tycho Brahe have struck upon a brand of melancholy that is uniquely Irish; evocative of listless afternoons in Dublin and rainswept walks on Sandymount strand.
Of course the trouble with writing sad, subtle music is that it can be a struggle persuading people to sit still and listen. While holding the audience's attention was a cinch during the distortion-heavy synthpop of opener Steel Wheels, meditative ballads such as Spike and the Wheel and Sun King met with restless indifference.
No doubt these songs are gently devastating if encountered in a quiet moment. Unleashed in a packed club, they came off flat, anaemic and slightly indulgent.
Given how deeply glum they sound on record, the really surprising thing about The Tycho Brahe was their sunny demeanour. Vocalist Carol Keogh caterwauled like a love-lorn banshee yet was otherwise full of smiles, guffaws and irreverent banter; guitarist Donal O'Mahony and bassist Diarmuid MacDiarmada belied the music's morose tempo by wielding instruments with sweaty gusto and pacing the stage in undisguised glee.
For all their studied despondency, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that The Tycho Brahe really aren't nearly as miserable as they'd like you to think. Perhaps they will only properly blossom on renouncing their fixation with all things bleak and 1980s. Why pout constantly when you're grinning on the inside?
Redmond O'Toole (cello-guitar)
NCH, Dublin
Martin Adams
Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV998 - Bach, Grand Solo - Sor, Five Bagatelles - Walton
the cello-guitar go the same way as the arpeggione? The latter was an early 19th-century stringed instrument, bowed and held like a cello but with the shape, frets and tuning of the guitar. Like so many hybrids, it offered insufficient advantages over its models, and would be forgotten were it not for Schubert's beautiful sonata, now a staple of the cellist's repertoire.
The cello-guitar was invented in 1994 by the celebrated guitarist Paul Galbraith. It is shaped and tuned like the classical guitar, but with extra strings a fourth above and below, and the bass is amplified through its cello-style spike, which sits on a wooden sounding box.
Redmond O'Toole's recital was absorbing, partly because of the instrument, but above all because of the player's natural artistry. Even though there was the occasional fumble with elaborate textures, the music spoke freely because of the priority he gave to shape, colour and rhythmic life.
The cello-guitar is louder than the classical instrument and makes some music easier because the left hand needs to change position less-often. It does not facilitate strumming textures and for technical reasons it is slightly less responsive than the standard instrument.
So in the idiomatic textures of Sor's Grand Solo and Walton's Five Bagatelles it showed no appreciable advantage and in some respects sounded too easy. Its real strengths lie in polyphonic music such as Bach's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV998, which, even on its native lute, presents baffling problems in producing clear part writing and projecting the bass. In this work, O'Toole's well-formed, transparent playing suggested that for such music the cello-guitar has serious potential.
McGonnell, Collins
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray
Martin Adams
Tierkreis - Karlheinz Stockhausen, Four Pieces Op 5, Piano Sonata Op 1 - Berg, Sonatine - Milhaud, Low - Gerald Barry, Composer's Holiday - Lukas Foss/Stoltzman, Clarinet Sonata in E flat Op 120 No 2 - Brahms
If one wished to sum up Carol McGonnell's clarinet playing in one word, character would do nicely - lorryloads of it! As a recipient of Music Network's Young Musicwide 2003 professional development scheme, she is on a six-concert tour with pianist Finghin Collins.
They open their demanding programme with Stockhausen's intricately melodic Tierkreis (1981), based on the signs of the zodiac.
The venue's inbuilt theatricality worked well. The composer's musical gestures were mirror images of the physical gestures between the pianist and the ambulatory, barefoot clarinettist.
In this piece, in Milhaud's Sonatine (1927) and in the Berg Sonata Op. 1 for piano, Finghin Collins tended to overemphasise the extremes of volume and tone. Especially in the Berg, one missed that subtlety of gradation in the middle that is essential for cohesion.
But make no mistake. McGonnell and Collins are an authoritative duo. Even in the unforgiving, asymmetrical rhythms of Gerald Barry's Low (1991), the ensemble was razor-sharp. At all times Collins was a paragon of the unashamed duo-pianist, yet highly responsive to a clarinettist whose spontaneity and penchant for risk would give less-secure players a severe attack of nerves.
Carol McGonnell explored extremities and everything between. One rarely hears sounds as quiet as those she can produce, and even though not all her risks paid off, one warmed to the evident fact that her pressing-to-the-edge was never driven by self-promotion. She is passionate about the power of music.
So it mattered not one whit that she fluffed a few notes in Brahms's Sonata in E flat Op. 120 No. 2. This is one of the great pieces of 19th-century chamber music. Everything counts. Both players knew that. They delivered.
Tours to Ardnamona House, Donegal, on Saturday, Donamon Castle, Roscommon, on Sunday and Cork School of Music next Thursday
