The first of the lunchtime orchestral concerts took place at the National Concert Hall last Tuesday. Despite competition from the World Cup match, several hundred were in the hall to hear the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Cavanagh.
NCH, Dublin
Aisling Casey (oboe), NSO/ James Cavanagh
Martin Adams
Works as familiar as Sibelius's Finlandia and excerpts from Grieg's two Peer Gynt suites call for performances which, at least, are reliable and show some feeling for the qualities on which the music's popularity depends.
In those respects, this concert did not disappoint. The playing was sound in the basics of orchestral discipline (balance, ensemble and tone), speeds were convincing, and in music which offers temptations to excess there was not one hint of a cheap shot.
These pieces would have been even better if the rhythmic style had been consistently goal-driven.
For example, parts of Finlandia were a little ponderous, while in Grieg's Solveig's Song, one missed that purposeful flexibility, that illusion of prose-made-music which can give this short piece a magical quality.
Peter Warlock said of his contemporary, Vaughan Williams: "I have only one thing to say against this composer's music: it is all just a little too much like a cow looking over a gate."
For all its bouts of rapidity, Vaughan Williams's Oboe Concerto is one of those pieces of English pastoralism that can leave one in a state of permanent contemplation. But not on this occasion, thanks to the remarkable playing of the soloist, Aisling Casey. Her beautiful tone and astonishing ability to drive a pliable line in slow and fast speeds made everything count.
This striking, convincing performance made one realise why she is making an international impact.
Lunchtime orchestral concerts continue next Tuesday at the NCH at 1.05 p.m., with the NSO, pianist Maria McGarry and conductor Chris Younghoon Kim.
Michael Warren
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork
Mark Ewart
The measure of an artist's success were to be governed by the broadness of their international appeal, then it is a telling feature that the public sculpture of Michael Warren can be found in such far-flung places as Latin America, Japan and the West Indies.
The exhibition at the Crawford Gallery features recent work by the Wexford- born artist, but also, significantly, includes a piece created in 1969, while Warren was still a schoolboy.
This nude female torso is a good starting point from which to consider his evolution as an artist and his pursuit of elegant, economical form, which has remained resolute throughout his career to date.
Warren's obvious allegiance to the Minimalist movement has reached its apogee in his wall-mounted wooden steles, which could hardly be more minimal.
Essentially these flat slabs of wood come very close to existing as found objects, forcing the viewer to work hard in assessing the level of artistic intervention. Once engaged, the subtleties become overwhelming as these silent sentinels distort pristine symmetry.
Traversing planes veer from true vertical, edges taper imperceptibly and surfaces buckle or lift, as if gravity or other unseen forces are effecting a change in the material itself.
The pared-down nature of structural form manifests itself also in the wooden surfaces which remain either untreated, burned or masked with gesso plaster.
The effect is reminiscent of ancient tablature wiped clean through the ages, with its secret images or script washed back into the earth by the elements.
Warren's skills also manifest within Constructivism.
The brilliant structural convolution of Counter Movement '84 is a case in point, as a collision of beams are brilliantly balanced, resting unbelievably on three points of contact with the floor.
Runs until August 20th.
The Ghost Train
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Jane Coyle
Ridley's play, written in just seven days in 1925, is a typical piece of old-fashioned British drama, the enduring, evergreen appeal of which is both baffling and indisputable.
Having run for some 600 West End performances back in the 1920s, it went on to be filmed three times - in a silent version in 1927, as a talking film in 1931, and again in 1941, starring Arthur Askey and Richard "Stinker" Murdoch, two of the best-loved popular actors of their day. Now it is part of the vast touring repertoire of Ian Dickens Productions, which returns to the Opera House in August with another ripping yarn, Don't Dress for Dinner.
Thankfully, neither actors nor audience take this harmless piece of derring-do too seriously, instead rather revelling in the mock-spooky atmosphere of an isolated railway station in deepest Cornwall, where the midnight train to Truro has been halted by a panicky passenger.
Holed up in a bleak, joyless waiting room, with no prospect of another train until morning, the characters huddle together like bewildered refugees - a honeymoon pair, a couple on the point of separation, a batty old woman with a birdcage and an even battier stationmaster (played by the wonderful Henry McGee).
They are, in turns, infuriated by the corny jokes of the silly ass, Teddie Deakin (Jeffrey Holland, engaging as ever), who pulled the communication cord and got them into this mess, and terrified at the prospect of a visitation by the ghost express train and its dead guard, which are said to haunt the station.
The suspense builds to a deafening crescendo at the interval, before the whole thing unravels into a totally surreal denouement, complete with Spanish and German arms runners, gun-toting cops, Soviet emissaries and a neurotic flapper, who turns out to be the notorious gangster moll, Chicago Sal.
Hmmmm.
The Ghost Train runs at the Grand Opera House until June 15th. Bookings from the ticket shop (tel: 048-90-241919).
