They changed the world with their inscrutable, post-modern style of electro-rock, but, asks Kevin Courtney, what do Radiohead do now to keep from being just another boring old avant garde group? Also reviewed Election Night by Gerry Colgan and Nabioulin at the NCH.
Radiohead, Olympia
Well, having crossed the rock 'n' roll Rubicon with the Kid A album, the Oxford quintet are certainly not turning back; their latest album, Hail To The Thief, is another collection of weirded-out tone poems, and although there are echoes of their former guitars-and-tunes incarnation in songs such as There There, 2+2=5 and A Punchup at a Wedding, the prevailing atmosphere is comfortingly numb and alienated. Radiohead will never be a straightforward rock band again, but it's clear that they're settling nicely into their strangeness.
The band played two shows at the Olympia over the weekend, warm-ups for their Point Theatre concert on December 3rd. These were fans-only gigs, tickets available only through the band's website and fan club. This weekend, they delivered the added bonus of a fantastic live performance. Looking fitter and happier than ever, Radiohead opened with their new single, There There, a typically-unhinged epic in the tradition of Paranoid Android.
You can debate the merits or otherwise of Kid A and Amnesiac till you're blue in the head, but there's no debating the onstage power of I Might Be Wrong, You And Whose Army? The National Anthem and Everything In Its Right Place. The crowd greets every oblique opus with the same unbridled joy that Oasis fans reserve for Wonderwall, and they even sing along to Thom Yorke's atonal free-association, conferring classic hit status on Yorke's disjointed, dissociated lyrics. Weird.
Another side-effect of Kid A is that Radiohead are now probably the most interesting live band around, guaranteed to do something completely different with each song. So we get the odd rhythmic timelag of Backdrifts, the vibes-and-piano fugue of Sit Down. Stand Up, the Floydian slipstream of Sail To The Moon, and the eerie, uncomfortable glare of The Gloaming. We also get the statically-charged rock of Airbag, Just and Paranoid Android, and the elegiac desolation of Lucky, Pyramid Song and How To Disappear Completely. It doesn't all quite make perfect sense yet, but at least Radiohead don't seem so wilfully obtuse anymore. - Kevin Courtney
Election Night, Bewley's Café Theatre
A pall of contrivance hangs over Donal Courtney's short drama, set in a hideaway bar in an election venue where the vote count is proceeding on a knife-edge. Tomas (Edward Coughlan) is the outgoing TD whose seat is in the balance as elimination and vote distributions brings the result ever closer. It looks certain that he will be defeated by an independent woman candidate whose campaign is based on a single issue - that of drink-driving. He is joined in the boozy retreat by Denis (Micheal O'Gruagain), an experienced party handler who saw it all coming, and Henry (Emmet Kirwan), straight from student politics and having already developed the requisite streak of ruthlessness for the national arena.
They urge Tomas to put a brave face on things, and have an eye to the future. But he, partly because of a guilty conscience rooted in a tragedy predictably involving a car, alcohol and a death, wants to quit politics.
The election proceeds, and Tomas loses by a tiny margin that clearly demands a recount.
It is nicely acted by the three actors, who make the most of the persuasive dialogue and less convincing scenario to rattle through some 45 minutes of light entertainment. - Gerry Colgan
Runs until June 14
Nabioulin, NSO/Markson. NCH, Dublin
Varèse - Ionisation. Prokofiev -- Piano Concerto No 2. Bruckner -- Symphony No 9.
The romantic piano concerto is one of the iconic symbols of 19th-century musical life, and the production of concertos in the romantic mould persisted well into the 20th century.
It wasn't until 1913 that it fell to the 22-year-old Serge Prokofiev to wrench the genre fully into the new century with the premiere of his Second Concerto. It was first heard at a summer concert in Pavlovsk, where the conservative audience made its displeasure plain, and the St Petersburg Gazette reported that "Prokofiev's Concerto is cacophony which has nothing to do with cultural music. His cadenzas are insufferable. The Concerto is filled to overflow with musical mud, produced, one may imagine, by accidental spilling of ink on music paper."
The concerto is now known only in the composer's reconstruction of 1923 (the original manuscript was lost) and maintains a small presence in the concert repertory, well behind its composer's more popular works. The explanation lies in the fact that the difficulties for the soloist are extreme - it boasts a first movement cadenza beside which all others pale - and its construction is awkwardly balanced.
Alexei Nabioulin, first prizewinner of the 2000 AXA Dublin International Piano Competition (and second prizewinner of the 2002 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow) played it on Friday with the patient thoroughness of a surgeon with a scalpel in the operating theatre.
He gave the impression of wanting to explore every nook and cranny of the great cadenza, however blackly harsh or dissonant, and no matter how great or apparent the struggle might be.
In taking the listener to the heart of a piece that his performance presented as anti-pretty, he had a partner of like mind in conductor Gerhard Markson. Markson made something sinister of the swooning string lines of the opening, and found many equally arresting perspectives in this most arresting of concertos.
By comparison Edgard Varèse's ground-breaking percussion piece Ionisation, premiered in New York 70 years ago, sounded slightly tame - correct in execution, but lacking in expressive import.
Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, the closing work of this year's chronological Bruckner cycle, was delivered with Markson's familiar clear-sighted vision, though, on this occasion, there were lapses in the playing. - Michael Dervan
