The Field: Dean Crowe Hall, Athlone. This is arguably John B Keane's best play, with at least a couple of outings behind it to challenge subsequent comers. Michael Scott's new production, while not without its merits, cannot be said to profit by these comparisons. The biggest question mark hangs over Mick Lally's portrayal of Bull McCabe, the land-hungry farmer.
He should be dominant, a man who intimidates all around him with his barely suppressed violence. In the first act, when he learns that the field he has rented for years is to be put up for auction, his reaction conveys annoyance rather than rage and projects an aura of frailty that is more psychic then physical. He does better in the second half, helped by some assured direction. The murder scene in which he kills the stranger who has come to bid for the field takes place in atmospheric twilight beset by a rainstorm.
Afterwards, the air of defiance he must adopt gives his performance some weight. But unless he finds more force and menace, this interpretation will not restore him to the top ranks of Irish actors.
A generally good cast gives him sound support. Brendan Conroy is the obsequious Bird, Pascal Scott the auctioneer and Mary McEvoy his frustrated wife. Garrett Lombard grows into the part of Tadgh, and Luke Hayden is a convincing police sergeant. As the bishop, Gerry Walsh achieves an impressive cameo.
As an overall opinion, the clichéd curate's egg will have to serve for a workman-like but uneven production. It should be possible to winch it up several notches, and then, who knows?
• On tour until the autumn
By Gerry Colgan
Callino Quartet: Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick.
Quartet In E Flat K428Mozart
Equali - String Quartet IVRaymond Deane
Quartet In A Minor D804Schubert
The acoustics of Down Arts Centre are immediate without being especially resonant, but they somehow suited the Callino Quartet's rich, slightly grainy sound. This group is solid all the way down - if anything, one sometimes wanted a bit more tone from the leader.
Their steady approach to the Mozart allowed an attention to detail and a careful weighting of chords that brought the all-important inner parts to life. The andante second movement could have been slightly more con moto, as indicated, but the care taken over the music brought its own rewards, particularly in a work that challenges a quartet's control of
intonation.
Schubert's A Minor Quartet, apparently the first piece this young Dublin-based ensemble played in public, suited their approach well. There was charm, as well as careful phrasing, in the second-movement variations on the Rosamunde theme; there was plenty of feeling in the following Minuetto; and the well-paced finale captured the music's emotional ambiguity.
Raymond Deane's fourth quartet was written for the Callino Quartet. It is a work that depends on contrast for its effect - contrast between tonal and atonal styles, contrast in dynamics and playing techniques. The quartet provided attack and restraint as necessary, giving strong and full-blooded or ethereal tone.
This was only the Callino Quartet's third appearance in Northern Ireland; one looks forward to hearing them more often.
By Dermot Gault
Trios @ 3: Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin
Trio In C Minor Op 1 No 3Beethoven
Ghost TrioBeethoven
Archduke TrioBeethoven
Under the title Trios @ 3, members of the teaching staff of the Royal Irish Academy of Music are exploring the repertoire of trios on four Sunday afternoons over the coming months.
The all-Beethoven programme offered by Eyal Kless (violin), William Butt (cello) and John O'Conor (piano) was generous and meaty, and clearly chosen to reveal the remarkable extent and rapidity of the composer's stylistic development.
Beethoven chose to publish three trios as his Op 1 in 1795, and the third and finest of these, which opened the concert, set a tone of turbulent drama to be heard in many of his later works in the same key.
The Ghost Trio of 1808 gets its nickname from the shadowy chromatic murmurings and atmospheric keyboard tremolandos of its second movement.
The Archduke Trio, premiered in 1814, is probably the most famous of all piano trios. It is of a scale and written with an expressive complexity and amplitude that established a high-water mark for the piano trio as a medium.
Sunday's performances were of an amiable, alfresco character. The playing was not always tidy in detail or ensemble, but the broader strokes were effectively painted and each player found moments that sounded exactly right.
• The next Trios @ 3 programme, featuring works by Tchaikovsky and Brahms, is on March 9th. Full details from 01-6764412
By Michael Dervan
Leonidas Kavakos & Péter Nagy: NCH, Dublin.
Violin Sonata In B Flat K378 Mozart
Divertimento Stravinsky
Violin Sonata Janácek
Violin Sonata No 3 Enescu
The Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos returned to Dublin after 11 years to perform in the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series.
His choice of music was unhackneyed and in the best of taste. Kavakos's playing and that of his pianist, Péter Nagy, was in the best of professional taste, too, everything nicely turned and polished, the violin tone on the suave side of sweet and controlled with unusual evenness throughout the range.
What the music-making lacked was a sense of engagement. This might be taken to be an advantage in the music of Mozart and Stravinsky, two composers who regularly suffer from an excess of emotionality in performance.
But the disengagement extended to issues of balance between the two players, so the shape of each part considered on its own was more persuasive than the two experienced in combination.
The storminess in Janácek fired the duo up rather more, and the heavy demands of the minutely annotated filigree in Enescu's Third Sonata brought out the best in
them.
The coolness of the playing may have been well removed from what the composer intended, giving an effect that sounded more synthetic than natural in flow.
But the music itself is mesmerising, even when its message is kept at such a distance.
By Michael Dervan
Hyper [Borea]: Whelans, Dublin.
If the compère's as Gaeilge introduction and the title of their new album, Gaelactica, didn't offer enough of a hint, then the presence of a bodhrán alongside the various electronic paraphernalia made it clear what musical culture Hyper\ spring from.
The medium is ambient trance - though the vibe ranged from the mellowest 5 a.m. grooves to jungle remixes belonging to a much earlier part of a night's dancing - but the flavour derives largely from the traditional.
Singer Úna O'Boyle, accompanying the beats, programming and sampling of main composer David Bickley, writes the vocals and melodies that embellish Hyper\'s expansive sound, drawing from a deeply infused traditional Celtic source but also incorporating styles and melodies, airs and rhythms, from Eastern and US folk traditions.
Holding together this mix was the stunning performance of O'Boyle, which acted as a nexus between the involved arrangements of Bickley and an audience that, at the outset, was there largely to watch rather than dance. Despite the slightly incongruous setting, this was a dance gig, and a passive crowd wasn't likely to stay passive for long.
Hyper\ hit the stage running, and by the end of their second tune the gap between spectator and participant had all but disappeared. O'Boyle wove a powerful spell visually and vocally, and as the gig progressed performers and audience both seemed in thrall to the music.
If Hyper\ can deliver such a rewarding experience with little more than an hour-long set, rest assured they are capable of melting any dance floor.
By John Lane
Kathryn Smith, Patrick Doherty & David Wray: Bank of Ireland, Dublin.
Kathryn Smith is an ideal operetta performer. In this lunchtime concert the soprano sang with the vocal equivalent of a smile and put across her words clearly. She also has a good sense of humour, as she showed in Poor Wand'ring One, Gilbert and Sullivan's merciless lampooning of coloratura showcasing. Oddly, she took Puccini's self-parodying O Mio BabbinoCaro at its solemn face value, imbuing it with the romantic passion missing from her I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls. She was a feisty Zerlina, a sensuous Hanna and a dreamy-eyed Magnolia in duets from Don Giovanni, The Merry Widow and Show Boat.
In these, she was partnered by baritone Patrick Doherty. He too is a dramatically aware singer, but his dark hues didn't fuse easily with Smith's focused soprano. His warm, somewhat plummy delivery was eminently suited to the gravitas of Wallace's In Happy Moments, but he made Giovanni into an avuncular gentleman and his singing of the lighter fare was generally too heavy handed. This is always a problem for baritones in music written for tenors. It's either too high for comfort, as in the title song from Rose-Marie, or wrongly coloured when transposed down, as it was for the excerpts from The Merry Widow.
But Doherty has a fine instrument, one that has all the depth of a good bass-baritone with an impressive upper extension. I would like to hear him in a more suitable repertoire.
Their singing was enhanced by the enthusiastic, sensitive and always supportive playing of pianist David Wray.
By John Allen
