Jackson Browne at Olympia, Dublin
By Kevin Courtney
They had to build a runway for Jackson Browne when he headlined Lisdoonvarna, in 1982. Here, though, all Browne needed was a stage, a few old (and new) tunes and a rapt audience that well remembered such classic songs as Running On Empty, The Pretender and Late For The Sky. In the audience was Christy Moore, who wrote a song about that Lisdoonvarna festival and recorded a version of Browne's Before The Deluge with Moving Hearts. The song wasn't on Browne's set list, but he did it anyway in Moore's honour.
At 54, Browne looks almost the same as he did back in the 1970s - his face seems a little weather-beaten, but his mullet is still intact. He's 20 years past his commercial peak, when songs such as Somebody's Baby, Lawyers In Love and Tender Is The Night were massive chart hits. He played none of these, but the audience was happy enough to listen to songs from his latest album, The Naked Ride Home. They knew the drill: be patient and attentive and the hits will come later. Maybe.
With a competent, restrained backing band, Browne paid respect to his back catalogue, drawing long-dormant emotions out of Late For The Sky, For A Dancer and In The Shape Of A Heart. It was good to hear a master songwriter at work, but thoughts kept going back to his classic 1978 album, Running On Empty, which captured the immediacy and excitement of life on tour in a rock 'n' roll band. If this gig were made into a live album, it would probably need a few thousand extra volts pumped through the mixing desk.
Still, there was a charge of electricity in the air when Browne came back out and shuffled tentatively into the piano chords of Load Out, the ode to roadies, punters, hotel rooms and tour buses, its lyrics updated to include Ali G on the tour-bus video. When the song segued inevitably into Stay, the crowd was up on its feet, and we felt we could fly like an eagle once again.
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Collegium Musicum 90 at St George's Church, Belfast
By Dermot Gault
Sonata A Tre Op 3 No 12 In A - Corelli. Sonata A Tre Op 1 No 12 In D Minor - Vivaldi. Sonata A Tre Op 1 No 1 In F - Corelli. Trio Op 14 In A - Leclair. Trio No 7 In D Minor - Boyce. Trio No 4 In F Minor - Arne. Trio In G Minor - Handel
Trio sonatas, so called because they were written for two melody instruments and bass, were the standard chamber-music genre in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Confusingly, four instruments are usually needed, a keyboard instrument reinforcing the bass line and filling in the harmony.
Hearing seven of them in a row might seem daunting, but there is a world of difference between Corelli's emphasis on the interaction between the two violins in his sonatas in A major Op 3 No 12 and F major Op 1 No 1 and Vivaldi's preoccupation with sonority and brilliant figuration in his variations on the well-known Follia theme.
There is a difference, too, between the melodic smoothness of the Italian composers and Leclair's idiosyncratic French style, with its plain, folk-like melodies and disconcertingly varied rhythms, and the sturdier style of Handel and his English followers Arne and Boyce. The intensity of Arne's F minor trio will surprise those who know him only from Rule Britannia, and Boyce's D minor trio, too, has more refinements than one might expect from his orchestral music.
What did remain constant throughout this concert was the outstanding playing of Collegium Musicum 90. One expects virtuosity and graceful, stylish playing from such distinguished performers, but recordings do not always capture the beauty of sound these period instruments make. This was enchanting music, beautifully played, and it sounded well in this now renovated church.
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Joe Pernice at Whelans, Dublin
By Peter Crawley
Joe Pernice's shoes sit obediently beside his chair. "They make a lot of noise," he explains. No brazen toe tapping will disrupt the gentle melancholy wrought on clean acoustic guitar with the merest of embellishment, yet tiny whispers, incongruously loud applause and the insolent clink of ice in drinks routinely infringe on this deceptive tranquillity.
Adrift on an ocean of lyrical misery, Boston's unlikely country pop exponent clings to buoyant melody like a life raft. As if to evade the depression that stalks his dour tales, Pernice's trail of aliases spans the country-flavoured Scud Mountain Boys, the chamber pop of the Pernice Brothers, a pared back Chappaquiddick Skyline and the folk synthesis of his solo persona, all of which are austerely represented tonight.
Inviting his guitarist brother Bob onstage, childhood memories are artlessly revisited, one of which, Midnight Cowboy, sees the brothers Pernice bow their heads in wistful remembrance. As the uptempo pop outing She Heightened Everything succumbs to a fatalistic refrain - "keep loving me to death" - and even the Olivia Newton-John cover Please Mr Please forgoes irony for fragile affinity, the comfort of Elvis Costello tones and Brian Wilson melodies is inestimable.
Following the melodious glimmer of Monkey Suit and Overcome By Happiness, Pernice delivers some parting advice while slipping on his shoes. "Be careful," he whispers, putting a spring in our step for the unforgiving paths outside.
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Tasmin Little (English Chamber Orchestra) at Helix, Dublin
By Martin Adams
Holberg Suite - Grieg. Double Violin Concerto, Violin Concerto In E - Bach. Divertimento For Strings - Bartók.
There is something aristocratic about the English Chamber Orchestra. As this concert in the Helix's Mahony Hall showed, these accomplished musicians would never do anything so vulgar as show off or milk the music for emotion. The control of feeling is very English; the values are purely musical.
From its inaugural concert, back in 1960, the ECO pioneered some of the first modern performances of early-baroque opera.
In this concert it was Bach concertos that received the characteristic semi-authentic treatment - the motivic clarity and brisk attack of period- instrument groups, plus the colouristic and dynamic opportunities offered by the ECO's modern instruments.
Tasmin Little's solo playing in the Violin Concerto In E, BWV1042, was beautifully tailored to the orchestra's style. It was still chamber music but impeccably judged to fill a much larger space than that for which the music was conceived.
The highlight of the baroque works came in Bach's Double Violin Concerto, BWV1043, for which Little was joined by the orchestra's leader, Stephanie Gonley. This performance took off through a responsiveness to detail one does not readily encounter with 22 players.
Grieg's Holberg Suite was full of colour and packed with the flexible rhythmic animation that shows this romanticised recreation of baroque dance suites at its best.
Bartók's Divertimento showed the orchestra's abilities at their finest.
Written in 1940, it is one of the most imaginative and forceful works from the composer's later years. It showed the ECO letting its hair down, in music which calls for just that.
The rhythmic bite and general panache of the outer movements were gripping, but the slow movement was amazing. From pin-dropping quietness in the vibrato-less opening to terrifying intensity, this was astonishing
stuff.
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Danilo Rossi (RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet) at Draíocht, Blanchardstown
By Douglas Sealy
Quintet In D, K593 - Mozart. Out Of Time - Dove. Quintet In C Op 29 - Beethoven.
The addition of an instrument to the string quartet always transforms the sound. Danilo Rossi (viola) and the Vanbrugh had all the richness of a string orchestra without losing the clarity of a quartet.
Their performance of Mozart's Quintet In D could be characterised as robustly serious but lacking in that subtle combination of surface lightness and inner weight the composer was master of. It was as if the players had in mind the desperateness of his financial situation at the time of composition and were emphasising the darker side of the music.
For me, the ensemble was much more convincing in Beethoven's Quintet In C, where the work unfolded with the passions and oppositions ofa drama set to music, only in this case it was an opera without words.
The members of the ensemble kept the independence of their individual parts but allowed currents of feeling to go with or against each other while never crossing out their meaning. The four movements may have followed the classical pattern, but more important was the sense of a whole skilfully suggested by the players.
Between the two quintets, the Vanbrugh played Out Of Time, a quartet by Jonathan Dove. This is a set of six brief movements with all the easy charm of a serenade; it formed a perfect lightweight foil to the other works. Its liveliness and tunefulness invited one's unexacting enjoyment.
