The Irish Timesreviews Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev Belfast Festival, Brad Mehldau Trio, Vicar Street, Dublin and Opera Theatre Company /Alcina, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan
Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev Belfast Festival
Henri Dutilleux – Correspondances;
Shostakovich – Symphony No 7 (Leningrad)
Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, begun in Leningrad when the city was under siege by the German army, and only completed after the composer was evacuated to Kuibyshev, was front-page news. Literally. It got him on the cover of Timemagazine, dressed as a heroic firefighter. And the transmission of the score on microfilm from East to West (via Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and Brazil to New York) is the stuff of spy novels.
It was dedicated to the city of Leningrad, and was a huge success and a valuable propaganda tool at home and abroad. It's conceived on an epic scale – playing for around 80 minutes – and the composer had originally planned titles for the four movements: War, Memories, The Country's Wide Expanses, and Victory. His programmatic explanations, which he later dropped, were widely circulated.
The first movement includes a section that's like a black and threatening version of Ravel's Bolero, relentless and overpowering, a feature that's been lampooned by no less a figure than Bartók (in his Concerto for Orchestra) and may well be behind Ernest Newman's famous put-down, that "to find the place of the LeningradSymphony on the musical map, look along the seventieth degree of longitude and the last degree of platitude".
The opening concert of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s brought Ireland for the first time a performance of the work by a Russian Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra from St Petersburg, playing under the inspirational guidance of Valery Gergiev, at the Waterfront.
Gergiev’s approach was measured, the famous first-movement build-up growing from the merest whisper, the ultimate payoff sounding all the more impressive for the implacabilty with which it had been prepared.
But, even in a performance as carefully sculpted and as glowing in detail as Gergiev’s, as alert in orchestral response as that of the Mariinsky players, the piece still falters under the weight of its own ambition. Neither the material nor its working out are of a quality to save it from sounding inflated, even when moment-by-moment it sounds as well as it did here.
The chalk-and-cheese programme opened with a performance of Henri Dutilleux's pellucidCorrespondances, a 2003 setting of texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, Prithwindra Mukherjee, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vincent van Gogh for soprano and orchestra.
The clear and true singing of Anastasia Kalagina was a consistent pleasure in music that effectively framed and highlighted the words which Dutilleux chose for their "inclination toward the mystical thinking on the part of the respective authors". With orchestral support of the utmost refinement, the result of this fastidiously elegant music was mesmerising in both its reflectiveness and its momentary eruptions of ecstasy. The Belfast Festival continues until Oct 31st. belfastfestival.com MICHAEL DERVAN
Brad Mehldau Trio
Vicar Street, Dublin
Someone once described the typical Broadway comedy hit of the era between the two world wars as “a watch that laughs”. It describes exactly the precision craftsmanship of a play where everything was carefully designed with a single aim; to entertain. Although it suggests there is a “yes but”, it’s a thing that requires skill and talent to carry off.
That description came to mind as the Brad Mehldau Trio slipped with practised ease into their brisk opener, Got Me Wrong, and thereafter moved smoothly through the gears on an as yet untitled Mehldau waltz and began to groove. As they continued in much the same vein with perhaps the pick of their first set – a fine Brownie Speaks, followed by a ballad, Something Good – that idea refused to go away. It was the same in a second set that included Nick Drake's Time Has Told Me, several Mehldau originals and the overwrought ballad, Somewhere, from West Side Story. The trio's performance was polished, classy, pleasurable.
There were specifics to admire, inevitably, in the interaction of piano, bass and drums by Mehldau, Larry Grenadier and a driving Jeff Ballard, and in Mehldau’s capacity to develop a dialogue between both hands, using one either to comment on an idea suggested by the other, or to develop it.
The pianist's signature ability to do this surfaced frequently, particularly in his own Vanishing Point, where he also delivered some flourishes of two-handed unison lines during a performance notable for some exuberant juggling with time by Mehldau in interchanges with Ballard.
For all these moments when things would momentarily surprise and solos took wing, there was a sense about their work that they knew exactly what was needed to satisfy an audience without challenging it.
As far as it goes, it's admirable. But, with musicians of this calibre, it doesn't go far enough, and the cumulative effect was that the air of slight disappointment wouldn't quite dissipate. The idea persisted that this was a trio playing well within its considerable capacities. At the end, the question remained "is that all?" And one felt guilty asking it. RAY COMISKEY
Opera Theatre Company /Alcina
Solstice Arts Centre, Navan
Handel's Alcinawas a great success for the composer. The opera played at John Rich's Covent Garden theatre in 1735. It had a chorus, a ballet, and transformation scenes – "A Noise of Thunder and Lightning, the Mountain suddenly opens and breaks to Pieces, and vanishing, leaves to View the beautiful palace of Alcina".
Opera Theatre Company's budget doesn't run to a chorus, a ballet or demanding transformation scenes. The company's new Alcina, which opened at Navan's Solstice Arts Centre, trims out the chorus and the small role of Oberto, and uses a minimal but stylish period-instruments orchestra, directed from the harpsichord by Christian Curnyn.
Director Annelies Miskimmon focuses on the many shades of love represented, natural and unnatural (by dint of a spell), love requited, unrequited, forced, faked, faithful, feeble.
The plot, out of Ariosto's Orlando furiosovia a libretto for Riccardo Broschi's L'Isola d'Alcina, tells of the sorceress Alcina, her bewitched lover Ruggiero, his rescue by his betrothed, Bradamante (in male disguise), and the ultimate downfall of Alcina, one of whose bad habits was transforming her former lovers into rocks and wild beasts.
Handel’s music makes the transformation of Alcina into something very real and touching. Although you mightn’t have expected it, this sorceress’s heart turns out to be genuinely taken, her expression of vengeance and anger is not just distorted by feelings of rejection, but ultimately leavened by love. The music is stirring and powerful, and expressed through vocal writing of the highest demand.
Soprano Sinéad Campbell-
Wallace charts the transformation with pathos, and the awakening of the bewitched Ruggiero (counter tenor Stephen Wallace) is documented through a performance that moves from a kind of perpetual hysteria to a more normal and plausible vocal delivery.
Mezzo soprano Doreen Curran’s Bradamante bears well the burden of some extremely virtuosic vocal writing, and there’s good support, too, from the voice of reason that is Melisso (baritone Julian Hubbard) and the more self-seeking Oronte (tenor Ed Lyon).
In the role of Alcina’s sister Morgana, soprano Jane Harrington diluted the effect of her pleasing tone by swallowing too many of her phrase endings.
Nicky Shaw's designs – a unit set that could be broken up and re- shaped, with good-looking Edwardian costumes – were quietly effective, and Tina McHugh's lighting included some effective panto colour coding. On tour until November 7th MICHAEL DERVAN
