Dance, and contemprorary and classical music in today's selection.
Dublin Dance Festival: Reykjavik Dance
SS Michael and John
This was a double-bill from two young Icelandic dancer/choreographer-led companies in which both, through combinations of text and movement, looked at aspects of image and perfection in people's social and personal lives. While sometimes the theatrical layers obscured the choreographic intent and both works might have benefited from some editing, the performers were always engaging in voice and dance.
In the first piece, Hundaheppni (A Stroke of Luck), two friends elaborately prepare a dinner party for themselves, creating the perfect scenario for spontaneous combustion, a deconstruction of a formal event. The over-elaborate minutiae in tense movement and gesture portend disaster, so when Lovísa Ósk Gunnasdóttir and her immaculately dressed dinner companion, Halla Ólafsdóttir, lose the plot and reveal their inner compulsions, we are not really surprised. The audience is invited at key moments to open and close its eyes to discover the course of events, but this is perhaps unnecessary as there is a certain predictability to the collapse of etiquette and the chaos that ensues. The two monologues delivered in rapid Icelandic (a translation is provided in the programme) are hypnotic but perfectly comprehensible in tone and frenzied movement as they either obsess about cleaning or the state of the world.
The second piece, Crazy in Love with Mr Perfect, again reflects the pressures that social conformity can bring. It is essentially a duet between two friends, glossing on the ways men and women look at each other and themselves, analysing and decoding in theory how the perfect partner can be found, while in real time they rehearse new dance sequences together.
As in the first piece, notions of self-delusion and self-absorption are prominent, but the winning combination of a blast of over-confidence and then transparent tentativeness was well-expressed in the energetic and precise movements of Brian Gerke and Steinunn Ketilsdóttir.
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SEONA MAC RÉAMOINN
Empty Moves (parts I II)
O'Reilly Theatre
When composer John Cage deconstructed vowels and consonances from Henry David Thoreau's journal to create Empty Words, he set out to make English less understandable. "Because when it's understandable, well, people control one another, and poetry disappears," he said in a 1974 radio interview. Cage's proud recording of these utterances - and more importantly the reaction of an increasingly agitated Milanese audience - is both springboard and touchstone for French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj's Empty Moves (parts I II).
This mightn't sound promising: a kinaesthetic version of what Preljocaj calls Cage's "unflappable pugnacity" in the face of booing, ironic handclaps, whistling and general hostility. But the hour of relentless motion turns Empty Movesinto a tour de force that proves Cage's contention that poetry can emerge from unintelligibility. The choreography might seem free-range, but much of it is in unison or in pairs so that there is a casual formality to the patterns and proof that Preljocaj has specified every detail of the clean movement and relaxed poses.
As the piece develops the raucous Milanese become louder in volume but quieter in significance. More and more the ear shuts out the background mayhem and focuses on Cage's calm voice, just as the eye recognises new and repeated details in Preljocaj's constantly inventive choreography and the connections between the two grow stronger. Whatever about the overtones of affirming art and freedom of expression in the face of the mob, there is humour as well as belligerence behind the Cage's performance of Empty Words, which is mirrored in Preljocaj's Empty Moves.
The four brightly dressed dancers (Natacha Grimaud, Céline Marié, Sergio Diaz, Yan Giraldou) capture a wonderful lightness throughout the hour, mixing formal classicalism with absurd gestures like gently flicking another person's nipple or making a comfortable place to sit out of a colleague's body. Preljocaj's pedigree alone should have drawn a larger audience to the O'Reilly Theatre, but except for one quiet walk-out,' those that came along met the ending with un-ironic cheers and whoops.
Dublin Dance Festival runs until May 3
MICHAEL SEAVER
Culwick Choral Society/Sherlock
NCH, Dublin
Fauré- Requiem. Ravel- Menuet antique. Poulenc- Gloria
Though a full orchestra was on hand for the second half of its concert, the Culwick Choral Society opted for the 1893 working of Fauré's Requiem, with accompaniment for small orchestra and organ. Since being brought to light by John Rutter 20 years ago, this has become the version of choice for discerning choirs, and on this occasion the lightened instrumental forces balanced optimally with the chorus.
Organist David Leigh injected a wealth of quasi-orchestral colour that would often have been sufficient in itself. There were rich contributions, however, from the viola-dominated string ensemble in the Offertorium, and the well-coordinated combination of organ, strings and harp worked to delicate effect in the In paradisum.
Conductor Bernie Sherlock, who is in her first season with the Culwick, maintained an involving atmosphere of tranquil seriousness that was epitomised by the lucid solo singing of bass Owen Gilhooly.
Soprano Sally Harrison (who was standing in for Rebecca Ryan) made a decisive first impression in the Pie Jesu, with just the right mixture of innocence and technique. An equally persuasive blend of angelic impartiality and worldly wisdom characterised her handling of the pivotal solo part in Poulenc's Gloria. This exuberant setting of part of the Mass teeters on the brink of secularising insouciance, and it seemed to release the choral sopranos from a guardedness that had dulled some of their moments in the Requiem.
The idiosyncratic je ne sais quoi of Poulenc's vocal writing can bemuse even the wariest of amateur choristers, and it caused a little blurring of the choral edges in the two Domine Deusmovements.
Yet this detracted little from the prevailing sense of spiritual chic. Sherlock had drilled her choir for a confident delivery, and took the music in big strides.
At St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork, on May 17th.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
Concorde
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
This concert by Jane O'Leary's new-music ensemble, Concorde, included the Irish premiere of Four Pieces(2006), by young Slovenian composer Nina Senk, which the ensemble will perform in Ljubljana next month.
Senk is only 25, but the riveting playing of Elaine Clark (violin), David James (cello) and Dermot Dunne (accordion) made it easy to hear why her music is already much travelled.
Although the programme gave no titles, her four epigrammatic movements quickly identified themselves as a prelude, a scherzo and two nocturnes. The gradual progression from constructive polyphony to quarrelsome clusters was persuasive, the instrumentation forcibly coherent.
The rest of the programme drew on Concorde's rich back-catalogue of Irish commissions. Two vocal works from 2006, Frank Corcoran's The Light Gleamsand Elaine Agnew's In the Adriatic, were elegantly articulated by soprano Tine Verbeke.
Taking a fragment of text from Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Corcoran's piece places its three monosyllables in a setting of poised abstraction, as if examining its vowels and consonants from various angles under a powerful microscope.
Agnew's piece, in contrast, is a setting of six elegiac poems by Chris Agee. A counterpoint of coincidences, where tension and release, freshness and frustration, mingle unpredictably, amplifies the mood of inconsolable distraction.
Stephen Gardner's quartet, Trane (1996), is a study in post-tonal techniques and textures that were textbook models for 20th-century composers. The first movement is a staunch essay in octotonicism (with shades of Brian Boydell's Quartet No 2), the second toys dreamily with clustered strings, while the third indulges in the frenzied poundings that 100 years ago were but a twinkle in Stravinsky's eye.
The music thus sounded less Gardner's own than do his more recent works. Yet, not least for O'Leary's tastefully forthright piano playing and the creamy declamations of clarinettist Paul Roe, it was a pleasure to hear.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
Bell, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra/Bolton
NCH, Dublin
Wagner- Siegfried Idyll. Mendelssohn- Violin Concerto. Mozart- Symphony No 40
Over the last 20 years, Ireland has been visited by a Salzburg Mozarteum Duo, a Salzburg Mozarteum Piano Trio, the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum, and, at the National Concert Hall this week, by the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, which at full playing strength is slightly larger than the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.
The programme didn't call for the full orchestra, but there was no lack of body in the tone, and sinew and strength aplenty in the playing.
The approach to the opening work, Wagner's Siegfried Idyllwas at the opposite end of the scale, with Ivor Bolton, the orchestra's principal conductor since 2004, securing a performance that was subdued and wilting in ways that fully suited the music, and had the added appeal of caressing curves in the rubato.
Joshua Bell had just the spirit to make a dashing impression in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. He allowed air into music which is often presented as too seamlessly lyrical, and he found ways of springing the rhythm and launching the passages of virtuoso rocketry at slightly unexpected angles.
Most unexpected of all was his decision to dispense with the familiar cadenza for one that seemed to take unusual liberties. But, then, that's the way most cadenzas sound the first time you hear them. It wasn't
always the neatest of performances, sounding at times like a refreshing work in
progress.
Ivor Bolton conducted with a lightness which made Bell's task easier, and there were some delicious moments woven into the orchestral fabric, not least the wonderful clarinet warbles in the finale.
Linear integrity was at the heart of Bolton's projection of Mozart's late G minor Symphony, and his approach scored
highly in a work where the richness of contrapuntal interplay is so essential to its success.
This was not a performance as lean in tone or as fully revealing as the Irish Chamber Orchestra offered two years ago under Douglas Boyd. But, among its many virtues, it had an arresting sometimes almost operatic sensuality that made a decidedly individual impression.
MICHAEL DERVAN
