When God created the world and heaven and Ireland, the angels who helped Him with the last didn't do too well, and so they got left in Ireland when He had His contretemps with Lucifer and went on to create Hell. These fallen angels became the Sidhe, the "Good People", and the price of their re-admission to heaven in time for Christmas would be three good deeds in a row - or so we learn in the prologue to this serious-minded entertainment for everyone over six years of age, derived by Karen Louise Hebden and Stephen Edwards from the folk and fairy tales of William Butler Yeats. And then, in 14 colourful scenes, we watch them pursue their quest to get back to heaven.
It is an imaginative quest, creatively staged by Hebden, with haunting but not hugely melodic music by Edwards providing settings for several of W B Yeats's poems, giving rise to singing and dancing with a small live band of pipes, percussion and keyboard under the musical direction of Andrew Synnott. There are some moments of striking beauty - often enhanced by Catherine Fay's sometimes exotic costumes and Trevor Dawson's sensitive lighting - and there is some creative audience participation in a terrific and chaotic chess match between King Midir and High King Eochaidh. Above all, there are lithe and lively performances from the excellent cast of six - Susan Anderson, Dara Clear, Richard Gibson, Frances Healy, Liz Schwarz and Jonathan Shankey.
The only snags are with the book, patches of direction and the songs, each of which at different times dispels a needed sense of urgency in pushing forward the narrative thrust of the evening.
But the actors, singers and dancers certainly held the close attention of their audience, regardless of age, at all times. And, by way of a footnote, the new Pavilion Theatre, is an attractive, comfortable and apparently flexible performance space even if, at times, it may offer some acoustic challenges.
Runs until January 6th (except December 24th to 26th) with matinees on various days at various times. To book phone 01-231 2929.
Ian Pace (piano)
Bank of Ireland Arts Centre
Snowdrift Michael Finnissy For Piano 10 - Richard Emsley Opus Contra Naturam Brian Ferneyhough Harrison's Clocks (exc) - Harrison
Thursday's lunchtime concert in the Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern series was devoted to British piano music. The pieces played by Ian Pace showed extreme and sometimes anarchic manipulations of time and material.
The oldest work was Michael Finnissy's Snowdrift (1972), which is driven by contrasts between mobile and static material and, even more, by the abrupt cutting-off and juxtaposition of ideas. The most recent piece was also the most extravagant in the way it defies formalistic concepts.
Brian Ferneyhough's Opus Contra Naturam is part of his opera project Shadowtime, where it accompanies a calculated-chaotic silent film of recognisable images from past and present. Ian Pace declaimed the barely meaningful text as he grappled with the extraordinarily difficult and barely coherent piano part. It was impressive stuff, even though it lived up to the anagram of the composer's name (reported by a friend), "he fry brain enough".
Ian Pace showed a remarkable control of rhythm and colour, and in music which presses pianism towards its limits, he and the Petrof piano seemed as one. Richard Emsley's For Piano 10 was written for this musician to explore differing types of touch.
The concert's highlight was Harrison Birtwistle's Harrison's Clocks (Nos 3-5), which layer differing motifs and rhythms throughout the keyboard. As Pace's well-written and insightful programme notes explained, they are studies in virtuosity for the composer as well as the performer. The clarity and energy of the playing lived up to that purpose.
By Martin Adams
National Chamber Choir/Celso Antunes
National Gallery
Lamento d'Arianna - Monteverdi
Italian Madrigals (exc) - Schutz
Sixth Book of Madrigals (exc) - Gesualdo
Padre nostro - Verdi
The National Chamber Choir's concert at the National Gallery last Wednesday evening was a revelation. The programming was excellent - groups of madrigals selected from Monteverdi's Seventh Book (1614), Schutz's Italian Madrigals (1611), and Gesualdo's Sixth Book (1611), plus Verdi's Padre Nostro from 1880. All were sung unaccompanied. The conductor was the Brazilian Celso Antunes, who directed the NCC and the Irish Chamber Orchestra two years ago in Messiah.
The concert opened with Monteverdi's madrigal arrangement of his operatic extract, Lamento d'Arianna; and just the first two chords signalled that this was going to be something special. The confident flexibility of the singers' responses to the conductor, their security with pitch, the homogeneity of each line, the clarity of words - together these embodied that "purging of melancholy" which, according to the poet Guarini, was the aim of early opera.
The Schutz and the Gesualdo madrigals had comparable strengths, the style of each composer came across distinctly, and the NCC coped well with the unusual demands of Gesualdo's chromatic lines. When they came to the Verdi they changed stylistic gear, and produced an apt, vibrato-rich, long-lined, lyrical performance.
The singing was by no means flawless. But its flaws were nothing compared with its strengths. The NCC should be to Ireland what the world-famous BBC Singers are to Britain. This concert - by far the best of the many I have heard from this group - showed that, with the right helmsman, they could be.
By Martin Adams
RTE Philharmonic Choir, NSO
Paul Mann National Concert Hall
L'Enfance du Christ - Berlioz
Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ was one of those pieces which came into being almost by accident. The enterprise began when the composer successfully passed off a little chorus in mock antique style as being the work of an invented 17th-century composer, Pierre Ducre. The work that later began to emerge grew in stages before reaching the three-part form we know today - Herod's Dream, The Flight into Egypt, and The Arrival at Sais - all with texts provided by the composer himself.
It's a work of the utmost tenderness: fragile, naive, and well endowed with that romantic wonder that was such a key presence in Berlioz's musical character.
Paul Mann, who conducted Friday's performance with the RTE Philharmonic Choir and the National Symphony Orchestra, showed acute responsiveness to its gentleness of spirit and delicacy of colouring. With a reduced number of players on the platform, he secured playing of exceptional restraint and intimacy. It's been a long time since I've heard the NSO play so convincingly in the style of a chamber orchestra.
The chorus entered fully into the spirit of the enterprise, but the soloists were altogether more mixed in achievement. Tenor John Mark Ainsley was a rather unsettled narrator, and Gerard O'Connor was in poorly-focused, blustery form as the Ishmaelite Father, showing just a single mode of delivery which seemed quite at odds with the character he was required to assume. On the other hand, the Slovak bass, Peter Mikulas painted a regally-burdened Herod at the start. Andrew Murphy was a sensitively mild-mannered Joseph. And Ann Murray, in spite of some over-heavy vibrato, was a consistently touching Mary. Murphy and Murray also sounded, both verbally and musically, altogether more sympathetically French than their colleagues.
By Michael Dervan
