Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent performances
The Seven Deadly Sins of Opera
Airfield Trust, Upper Kilmacud Road, Dublin
The Seven Deadly Sins of Operais a mind-catching title. On this second concert in a four-venue tour, funded by the Music Network Touring and Performing Award, it lived up to the promise.
Soprano Sylvia O'Brien and pianist Hanna Shybayeva presented a sequence of arias that covered the gamut, though one sin had to be bent a bit. After all, foody gluttony is the preserve less of svelte sopranos than of pot-bellied basses. So the concert ended with a delicious rant about jewels, Glitter and be Gay, from Bernstein's Candide.
The nine excerpts ranged from Handel's Giulio Cesareto the aforementioned Bernstein. Sylvia O'Brien sang with unfailing authority, even though she
over projected for the pleasantly intimate yet resonant room in Airfield House. Her most consistent strengths lay in her sense for the way music serves words, and words serve drama, and in an impeccable sense of timing.
During one of her occasional and apt introductions, she said how pleased she was that Hanna Shybayeva was able to come on this tour with her. This reviewer was pleased too, for, outside the superstar circuit, Shybayeva is one of the most profoundly musical accompanists I have heard in some time.
"Accompanist" seems an inadequate word for a pianist who, from the notes that opened the concert – Vedrai carinofrom Mozart's Don Giovanni, so obviously understood that her role was to create distinctly moving parts rather than chords. That understanding, and strong technique, made the four piano transcriptions of arias, including some of Liszt's from Wagner, a treat rather than interludes between the main vocal items.
Sylvia O'Brien's effective stage presence and subtle acting-out of each aria, made this an engaging experience. It was a concert that I approached wondering what it might be like, and left thinking "That was great!" - MARTIN ADAMS
** Tours to Tinahely on Saturday and to Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford, on Sunday
Two-Way Split
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
There is an exciting yet understated grace to the dancing of the Cathy Sharp Dance Ensemble, on a return tour to Ireland that endures beyond the performance of this two-part programme. That fluidity is a hallmark of their style and is elemental to the design of both works which share a common bond of fragmentation.
First up is Double Jeby Frederic Dumeril, former artistic director of the Basel Ballet, and home city for this company. It moves with electric speed, as the six dancers explore ideas of individual personality and identity and play with projected versions of themselves. The choreography eloquently conveys a mix of familiar, affectionate and quizzical responses to this occasionally confrontational game of shadow play with unsynchronised screen reflections.
The score (blending Nyman, Pärt and Donnacha Dennehy among others) underlines the disruptive energy of the piece and the pervasive air of suspense, as if the dancers are unsure which version of themselves might appear. Are these anonymous ghostly figures flitting on the screen, remembrance of things past, presentiments of new changes?
A change of mood and tempo also underlines Cathy Sharp's own work, . . . like shattered glass, as she explores how a sudden emotional shift , internally or externally, can disturb, isolate and even generate a new dynamic.
There is a moment in a particularly subtly crafted sequence where we are
enveloped in beautifully liquid duets that are generating tender cleaving moves: one dancer’s back against another or the draping of arms on proffered necks or shoulders.
The atmosphere is of quiet yearning and consensus. Then the tone switches, the empty stage is bathed in Michel Guntert's strangely orange glow and a haunting solo from Patti Smith's About a Boyemerges.
The final tinkling sound of shattering glass as the dancers begin to regroup is a timely reminder of life's fragility. Here we have gentle reflective dance for these abrasive times. - SEONA Mac RÉAMOINN
Fionnuala Moynihan (piano)
John Field Room, NCH
Bach – Goldberg Variations Variations is an ultimate test of musicianship. One of the few works by Bach to be published in his lifetime, it is described on its title page as “An aria with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals . . . [and] composed for connoisseurs.” Connoisseurs indeed! In a work that, if played with all the repeats, lasts around 90 minutes, Bach gives few indications of performance style. So the player is confronted with an unusual array of decisions.
How does one pace the successive variations.? Should the performer underline the composer’s careful arrangement of variations into patterns – for example, every third variation is a canon; and if so, how? Some strikingly different answers to those and other questions may be found in recordings as diverse as those made by pianist Glen Gould 1955 and 1981, and those made on harpsichord in 1933 and 1945 by Wanda Landowska. Even these great musicians changed their minds about how to serve music of inexhaustible profundity; music that looks back at the performer and asks “How profound are you?” It is evident that Fionnuala Moynihan is a thoughtful musician, well capable of considering many of these deeper issues. In this lunchtime performance, without repeats, she grouped several of the variations into pairs by adopting the same underlying tempo; she contrasted lines in trio textures, such as variation 13, via variations of tone in each line; and she paused before variation 17 – which felt appropriate for a piece in the style of a French overture.
Although there was a handful of slips, these did not interrupt the gently remorseless flow of an absorbing performance, replete with subtle insights. It succeeded in doing what is most important – suggesting that this is indeed one of the great things of music. - MARTIN ADAMS
