Irish Times reviewers hear the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and the RTÉ NSO at the National Concert Hall, and the Crash Ensemble at Crawdaddy in Dublin.
RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
John Buckley - Campane in Aria. Mozart - Symphony No 35 (Haffner). Beethoven - Symphony No 9 (Choral)
Twenty-five years ago the NCH opened its doors for the first time for a programme that consisted of Seoirse Bodley's Third Symphony (Ceol, setting texts by Brendan Kennelly, and with audience participation) and Beethoven's Choral Symphony. The 25th anniversary to the day was marked by a similar programme, a short, celebratory work, Campane in Aria, by John Buckley, Mozart's Haffner Symphony, and, again, the Beethoven.
Campane in Aria (the title taken from the Italian phrase used by composers to instruct horn players to raise the bell of their instruments) is a firecracker of a piece. Buckley is a composer who favours a glittery, explosive orchestral style, and his new piece is true to form, a short moto perpetuo exercise, which gave the orchestra a bracing workout, and the audience a kind of open-top ride.
Gerhard Markson delivered the new work with panache, but again failed to penetrate to the heart of Mozart's Haffner Symphony, which he was conducting for the second night in a row, after the work was substituted for a Paganini concerto due to the indisposition of the soloist in the previous night's subscription concert.
Markson's handling of Beethoven's Choral Symphony was as sure and stable as the performance on the opening night 25 years ago had been unpredictable. Markson's way is to steer the symphony towards its choral finale, to pace it in such a way that the finale seems neither muddle nor anti-climax, but the inevitable conclusion of what has gone before.
The bass soloist Markus Brück handled the peroration with firm conviction. The other soloists (Majella Cullagh, soprano, Imelda Drumm, mezzo soprano, and Paul McNamara, tenor) made a cohesive group in spite of some momentary individual aberrations. And the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir sang with suitable fervour. - Michael Dervan
Crash Ensemble
Crawdaddy, Dublin
Andrew Johnstone
With guests Kevin Volans and Jill Richards, Crash regulars took solo turns in a programme chosen with savvy by the ensemble's artistic director, Donnacha Dennehy.
Two percussion items framed the proceedings, with Xenakis's Rebonds B (1988) getting stompy delivery from Sam Staunton, and the late James Tenney's Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971) swelling through its accustomed searing apex.
In apt contrast were two soliloquies: a thoughtful reading by clarinettist Deirdre O'Leary of Scelsi's Ixor (1956), and the premiere by double-bassist Malachy Robinson of Ian Wilson's Shattentiefe (shadowy depth).
It's a doubly appropriate title, since the use of scordatura and harmonics places the music in a penumbra between notes and noises, and a 10-minute digital delay causes the second half of the piece to shadow the first.
The material is episodic and easily grasped, so that on its recurrence at the half-way point there's a satisfying sense of potentials being fulfilled, of obscurities being clarified.
Sadly, Crawdaddy's background electrical whir denied the music its indispensable context of silence, and - in Helmut Lachenmann's quasi-electronic Pression (1970) - swamped much of the painstakingly detailed playing of cellist Kate Ellis.
But she was fully audible in Steve Reich's Cello Counterpoint (2003), where her own amplified live playing gave the composer's multi-track tape a run for its money.
Reich may have spiced up minimalism with the African element, but Kevin Volans - though South African born and an old hand at native styles - sought to purge it of that popularising quality with his 26-minute Cicada (1994) for two pianos.
In this Irish premiere, he and Richards calmly pulsed away on the scarcely changing harmony. The effect might have been only subtly different from what's achievable by a solo pianist, but it's the subtle differences that make Volans really stand apart.
