A seelction of events reviewed by Irish Timescritics

Tina Turner

O2 Dublin

STRAIGHT OFF the mark, let's make it quite clear that Tina Turner doesn't do subtle; even in the mid-show respite of a rendition of The Beatles Help, it was all the 69-year-old singer could do to hold it back to a level of calm.

But then, Tina Turner has enjoyed a fast and furious life, and this comeback, no-apologies Greatest Hitsshow seems to have been tailor-made to shout out Tina's talents to the heavens.

Structured like a high-end residency show you’d pay top dollar to see in Las Vegas, this had fireworks, pyrotechnics, backing singers, dancers and seasoned journeymen musicians (including one-time Wishbone Ash guitar hero, Laurie Wisefield).

It had split-screen displays, Cirque du Soleil-type interludes, costume changes and the kind of breathless, professional enthusiasm that comes from having spent more than 50 years aiming to please an audience.

It is the singer’s propulsive, unflagging attitude that ensures the show doesn’t fall into cabaret disrepute.

If you’re looking for cutting-edge music beloved by people who prefer the likes of Animal Collective to Bryan Adams, you won’t find it here; if you’re looking for a traditionalist approach to fusing showtime fun with hard rock aesthetics via a series of scorching old-school RB and buckled-and-belted

AOR songs that showcase Turner’s still-powerful voice to full effect – and which deploys her as a touchstone for feminine identity, if not survival against spousal abuse and a misogynistic music industry – then you’ve come to the right place.

OTT? Absolutely, but in this case those initials stand defiantly, proudly for Oh, Tina Turner! TONY CLAYTON-LEA

UCD Scholars, RTÉ Concert Orchestra Earley

St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

Bach – Magnificat. Handel – Concerto Grosso No. 11; Birthday Ode for Queen Anne; Zadok the Priest.

THE UCD Scholars do most of their singing away from the general public. They are a university-based choir, generously backed by UCD for whom they act as cultural ambassadors including a performance in Rome on the occasion of the handover of the European presidency from Italy to Ireland.

So it was good to hear them in a major Dublin venue with this all- Baroque programme presented in celebration of their 10th anniversary.

The conductor was artistic director and co-founder Desmond Earley, a UCD faculty member and harpsichordist currently completing a doctorate in historical performance.

How well they responded to his vision of what we used to call authentic or period performance. In both big choral works – Bach’s Magnificat in D and Handel’s Birthday Ode for Queen Anne – Earley looked for a light touch with energy and for quickish tempos.

His singers nearly always delivered, ever lively and alert to his direction, text crisply articulated, passages of counterpoint clean and confident, and overall simply a fine, well- balanced choral sound.

The soloists he assembled were well suited to each other and to the repertoire and to how he wanted to perform it.

Bass Brendan Collins and tenor Dean Power gave stylish (ie non- 19th-century operatic) accounts of their different solos, as did the trio of women, sopranos Helen Hassett and Belinda Loukota, and mezzo Sharon Carty.

Carty in particular, still away studying in Vienna, sang with a shining clarity and strength – someone to watch out for.

Also responding well to Earley’s historically aware ideas was the RTÉ Concert Orchestra who, despite playing modern instruments, played with the spirit and energy associated with authentic baroque performance.

This came to the fore in the evening's only non-choral music, No. 11 from Handel's Opus 6 set of Concerti Grossi, featuring a delightful violin dialogue between leader Mia Cooper and Elizabeth Leonard. MICHAEL DUNGAN