Classical 2005/Michael Dervan: How quickly things change. The fortunes of Ireland's orchestras have shifted considerably over the last 12 months with at least one downturn that seems very serious indeed (the RTÉ Concert Orchestra) and upturns that are full of promise for the future (the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra).
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra's grand plans to become orchestra-in-residence at the Helix were announced by no less a figure than the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.
Sadly, they never came to anything, and the orchestra has now completely abandoned its classical programming at Dublin's northside concert hall.
As a result, its conductor, Laurent Wagner, is not seeking a renewal of his contract. Why would he? There's nothing much left for him to do.
With the RTÉCO concentrating on pop music, the Helix's Mahony Hall features very little of the sort of activity - classical orchestral concerts and recitals - which it was expressly designed to facilitate.
The failures of RTÉ and the Helix, either individually or jointly, to make the Mahony Hall a must-visit venue are clear. And Wagner's well-intentioned programming, it must be said, simply didn't have the spark, or the drawing power from the chosen soloists, to build up audiences at the new venue.
Lurking behind all of this is another failure, that of the Arts Council to shoulder responsibility for nurturing activity in the only new concert halls - the University Concert Hall in Limerick and the Mahony Hall in Dublin -which have been opened in Ireland since the foundation of the State (the current National Concert Hall was converted from a 19th-century building). The apparent indifference of the Arts Council is such that one could almost imagine that in the face of Irish philanthropy to match that of Denmark's Maersk McKinney Møller, who donated a €336-million opera house to the Danish nation, the Arts Council here would twiddle its collective thumbs rather than fund programming there.
There's been no word yet from RTÉ about the shape of future programming from the Concert Orchestra. But the Helix has at last shown acknowledgement of the problems it faces, by appointing Imelda Dervin and Margaret O'Sullivan as music advisers. Tough as the Helix's problems currently are, they can only get worse if and when the National Concert Hall's ambitious plans for a second auditorium bear fruit.
Things are much better at RTÉ's other band, the National Symphony Orchestra. The welcome return to the cyclic programming of the mid-1980s is continuing. Schumann, Stravinsky and Beethoven have already been highlighted. The Shostakovich symphonies are already underway, and Brahms is to come next year.
Principal conductor Gerhard Markson gave invigorating readings of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Gerald Barry's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and the concert premiere of Barry's opera was issued on CD in time for the opera's stage premiere at English National Opera.
However, Markson's five-concert Beethoven cycle in May was lacklustre, and, in truth, disappointing enough to draw attention to the fact this conductor's work has lost much of the edge it had in his early years in Dublin. It's only rarely now, and mostly in new music, that there's any particular keenness in the way the orchestra responds to him. And there's an awful lot that sounds routine. The distance between his peaks and his troughs has become uncomfortably wide. The most scintillating playing I heard from the orchestra all year came under Giordano Bellincampi, whose January performance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique quite simply lifted the orchestra's music-making on to a higher plane.
The Ulster Orchestra has been experiencing a different kind of adventure under its principal conductor, Thierry Fischer, whose period-performance inclinations have consistently coloured his work in Belfast. Fischer moves to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales next September, and no successor has yet been announced. Belfastman Kenneth Montgomery, a former artistic director of Opera Northern Ireland, is the UO's new principal guest conductor. But time is running out for the appointment of a replacement for Fischer. Let's hope the UO is not going to repeat the experience of the NSO in Dublin in the 1990s, when the absence of a principal conductor led to a bad patch in the orchestra's history.
The Irish Chamber Orchestra is also in a state of transition. Having said goodbye to Nicholas McGegan as music director in July, it will greet violinist Anthony Marwood as its new artistic director in January. In spite of some excellent performances and the welcome exploration of baroque repertoire, McGegan's three years with the orchestra did not live up to their original promise. And his stewardship of the orchestra's summer festival was also lacking in consistency of vision.
To be fair, the Arts Council's treatment of the orchestra in the face of the government's 2003 arts cutbacks can't have helped. Although the ICO had 19 players on contract, the council chose to cut it on the basis that its Arts Council designation (as a non venue-based production company) meant it was an organisation without significant overheads. I've only managed to hear one of Marwood's two ICO programmes, and from the performance point of view the omens now seem to be extremely good.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra (formerly Christ Church Baroque), which was treated even more harshly by the Arts Council in 2003, has more than recovered from that setback. After a period of high managerial turnover, there's been a thorough internal re-organisation. With Mark Duley as sole artistic director, the IBO has been getting its act together as regards repertoire planning and consistency of performing personnel. The playing has improved and the orchestra has a cogent vision for its future, which includes an annual festival in Ardee, Co Louth. Its aspirations are to put players on contract, very much on the model of the ICO, and to set up an ongoing relationship with leading period violinist Monica Huggett, whose IBO concerts - including an NCH performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons -have constituted some of the orchestra's recent highlights.
The Crash Ensemble has this year been out and about at home rather more than in the recent past. Their programmes brought a welcome first Irish airing for the highly-individual and strangely powerful work of Munich-based US composer Gloria Coates, as well as a concert featuring Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, with the composer and Gavin Friday in the line-up.
Kilkenny Arts Festival has also improved its classical offerings, and drew large, appreciative crowds for Rachmaninov's Vespers from Ex Cathedra under Jeffrey Skidmore, and the choir's performance of a Latin American Vespers programme. Kilkenny's classical programme, however, still remains a great deal smaller than it was in the festival's heyday.
Highs & Lows
High
The standout event was West Cork Chamber Music Festival's searing presentation of Britten's Canticles headed by Ian Bostridge and Robin Blaze. Also hugely impressive were Israeli clarinettist Sharon Kam's quicksilver adaptability at the Vogler Spring Festival, Kurt Masur's Beethoven with the London Philharmonic at the NCH, effortlessly balancing expressive ease and emotional charge, and the vividly characterful Cuarteto Casals in European Quartet Week in Cork.
Low
RTÉ Lyric fm's dropping of the live RTÉ NSO broadcasts on Fridays is like RTÉ deferring the relay of a sports fixture it owned live rights to.
