Irish Times writers review concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, the RTE Concert Orchestra and post-grunge band Jetplane Landing.
Wallfisch, National Symphony Orchestra/Brophy
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Tintagel - Bax. Cello Concerto - Elgar. London Symphony - Vaughan Williams
It was unfortunate that illness prevented Vernon Handley from conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in repertoire where he is second to none. What a challenge this presented for the orchestra's assistant conductor, David Brophy, who jumped into the breach when the news arrived. Some of the warmest post-concert applause was from the players. Everyone had done their bit.
English music's tendency towards intricacy (think of Tallis, Purcell, Elgar and Tippet) is epitomised in Bax's tone poem Tintagel, from 1917, and in Vaughan Williams's London symphony, composed in 1914 and revised 20 years later. For their dense textures and open-ended ideas to coalesce, control of timing and orchestral balance are essential.
In all those respects Brophy was on strong form. Economy of gesture indicated his confidence that the musicians could do justice to demanding music outside their regular repertoire. He also showed a knack at turning a structural corner in elegant style.
There would have been a more passionate edge if rhythm had driven towards climaxes so that, in the case of Bax's seamless paragraphs, long-distance waves seem to break on the rocks - the composer's own image. But the audience's attention was held by playing of impressively quiet confidence.
In a rewarding account of Elgar's Cello Concerto, Raphael Wallfisch showed the best kind of star quality. Melody spoke out with deceptive ease, never striving yet brimming with quiet rhetoric. Cello tone was gorgeous, full of variety, and impeccably related to expressive purpose. With generally reliable playing, this was a performance freed from the weight of tradition and full of the pleasures of making music.
Martin Adams
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Muraro, RTÉ Concert Orchestra/ Wagner
The Helix, Dublin
Castor And Pollux Suite - Rameau. Symphonic Variations - Franck. Concerto For The Left Hand - Ravel. Symphony in C - Bizet
Laurent Wagner, the new principal conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, is pushing out the boat in unexpected ways. The greatest innovation in this concert in his Tale of Four Cities series was a suite from Rameau's Castor Et Pollux, opening the programme on Paris. Like many baroque composers, Rameau is now largely the preserve of specialists. So it's particularly heartening to find the generalists of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra braving this rewarding area of repertoire, which is already being opened up to Irish audiences by the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan.
McGegan is an early-music specialist, and his ear for the colouring of Rameau's writing, as well as its rhythmic snap and melodic swirl, is sharp indeed. Although Wagner's players can't muster quite the same unanimity of spring, their handling of this attractive suite was appealingly energised.
Roger Muraro, a pupil of Yvonne Loriod, was the evening's piano soloist. He was lucid in Franck's Symphonic Variations and heroic in Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, a work where the odds seem so impossibly tilted against the soloist, and Ravel's writing is so careful in its sonorous filling out, that the pleasure of popular success readily awaits the valiant performer. It is, however, shoddy of RTÉ to have printed a biography of Muraro that describes him as the winner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition: he tied for fourth place behind the only Irishman to win this competition, Barry Douglas.
Bizet's youthful Symphony in C, written in just over a month at the age of 17 but not performed until 60 years after the composer's death, is a work brimming with joie de vivre. And the orchestra, which made such a persuasive case for the exuberance of Mendelssohn's Italian symphony in the opening concert of the series, approached the altogether lighter charms of the Bizet with similarly effective brio.
Michael Dervan
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Jetplane Landing
Whelans, Dublin
Jetplane Landing are a rock group lumbered with what New Yorkers might call issues, but that is not so remarkable nowadays. What sets the Anglo-Irish quartet apart from the nu-metal pack is their ability to inject emotional depth into such thematic clichés as fear of globalisation and distrust of authority.
The band have bludgeoned a path through post-grunge orthodoxy without sacrificing a passion for inconsequential pop music that cannot be concealed no matter how many buzzsaw guitars and screeching vocals are poured into their songs. I Opt Out, the opener, hit you like a sonic manifesto, polemical and mad as hell yet taut with melody.
As the show progressed Jetplane Landing seemed to grow angrier and angrier. Singing in an dusky growl, frontman Andrew Ferris flung vitriol at his twin bugbears of conformity and capitalism. At his side Cahir O'Doherty and Jamie Burchell threw out power chords and snarling hard-core licks while Raife Burchell attacked his drums as if determined to sprain something.
A borderline-metal band hefting a towering social conscience might sound about as enticing as an appointment with your orthodontist. So credit Jetplane Landing for the self-awareness to corral their rage within a blistering pop-rock blueprint that will excite even those who haven't read No Logo.
Ed Power
