Reviews include Exquisite Pain at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Praák Quartet at St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle and  the Palestrina Choir, with OSC/Wolff at St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin

Exquisite Pain

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

The British urban theatre ensemble Forced Entertainment visited the Project for two sell-out performances of French conceptual artist Sophie Calle's book, Exquisite Pain. Calle works primarily as a photographer and installation artist, so the installation quality of this performance seemed as fitting as it seemed troubling.

In Exquisite Pain, Calle uses a single question to excavate the modern human condition. By asking a panel of subjects the question "When did you suffer most?", Calle manages both to construct a fascinating insight into our capacity to cope in moments of extreme existential pain and to expose this instance of suffering as a vagary of perception; one of the distinguishing qualities of the human mind.

In its theatrical form, Exquisite Pain is reduced to its basic function as an act of storytelling. The stories are drawn from Calle's own experiences of a doomed love affair and the stories of anonymous contributors whose tales of suffering complement the progression of Calle's own journey from self-absorption to philosophical acceptance. Forced Entertainment maintain the important visual basis of Calle's work by projecting the stark photographic images that accompany each testimony in her book on wide-screen televisions behind the two actors, Claire Marshall and Tim Etchell.

These images are distilled memories that contain the searing emotion of the sufferer in a single frame; much as the individual contains their own experiences of sadness in the story of a single happening.

The banality of the images further exposes the relationship between perspective and perception; how the most trivial events become the defining moments of our lives.

Conceptually, the repetitive narrative of Calle's autobiographical input allows her to develop these ideas; how telling stories and listening to stories give us the perspective to overcome our grief.

Theatrically, however, the repetition becomes a feat of endurance - but one whose endurance is central to Calle's philosophical point.

Suspicions of self-indulgence are gradually wiped away as the author rewrites her biography; revealing a philosopher and artist in development.

Forced Entertainment perhaps exploit Calle's life experiences too, by using a text that requires so little translation for the stage. By performing it live, however, they underline the material concerns of Calle's existential philosophy, and bring it to an audience that might otherwise fail to find the work so compelling.

Praák Quartet

St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle

Haydn - Quartet in G minor Op 74 No 3.

Beethoven - Quartet in B flat Op 130.

Smetana - Quartet No 1

Beethoven may not have intended his Grosse Fuge to be an explicit expression of the private hell to which his deafness ultimately banished him, but it certainly came across as such in a fearless performance by the Czech Republic's Praák Quartet.

This was in stark but effective contrast to the mood of quiet resignation associated with the onset of deafness in Smetana's avowedly autobiographical quartet From My Life. These deeply personal works were preceded by Haydn's altogether lighter Rider quartet. Though some careful playing impeded the flow of the Minuet, there was quasi-operatic rhetoric in the Largo, and a fitting touch of comedy in the obstinately wayward Finale.

Vibrato is a defining factor in every string ensemble, and the Praák Quartet used a lot of it. This perhaps had the purpose of cutting through the woolly acoustics of St Patrick's Hall, but with Haydn and Beethoven it didn't consistently enhance the sound.

At moments in Haydn's Largo, however, and in the slow interlude of the Grosse Fuge, some plain chording was noticeably better focused.

The group's decision to end with their compatriot Smetana - rather than with Beethoven as originally planned - proved wise.The result was that their best playing was saved until last. Here the melodies weren't just better connected, they were impassioned, particularly in the viola and cello solos opening the two central movements.

If some of the passage-work still wasn't as fastidiously voiced as it might have been, that hardly mattered: intense communication and large-scale characterisation were the priorities. And with easy-to-follow rubatos, repeated chords that bounced like a ping-pong ball, and pizzicatos synchronised to perfection, there was a strong sense of the seasoned ensemble that the Praák Quartet have acquired over several decades of playing together.

Palestrina Choir, OSC/Wolff

St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin

Bach - Birthday Ode; Cantatas 24, 88, 177

The world's leading, living Bach scholar, Christoph Wolff, was in Dublin to conduct the Pro-Cathedral's Palestrina Choir in a concert which included the first Irish performance of music by Bach newly discovered only last May.

Wolff, German-born Harvard professor and the director of Leipzig's Bach-Archiv, was the visiting conductor as the Orchestra of St Cecilia resumed its ongoing 10-year survey of Bach's complete church cantatas.

The new piece - a 12-stanza Birthday Ode for soprano, strings and continuo which Wolff has numbered BWV 1127 - was composed in 1713 to celebrate the 53rd birthday of Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar.

In a spoken introduction, Wolff explained how the text was an acrostic on the duke's name and how Bach determined that the voice enters the piece at the bass-line's 53rd note - "we can't hear it but it's nice to know!"

Only the first and last stanzas were given, and the music sounded light, bright and - for Bach - very straightforward.

There was music of a much more layered sort in the opening chorus (one of only two in the afternoon, plus three chorales) of Cantata 177, Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (I cry to you, Lord Jesus Christ).

Listening, it was hard not to project or imagine the influence of so much scholarly insight onto what was a clean, rather conservative direction in a movement not unlike the opening of the St John Passion except less dramatic and on a smaller scale. His results were good, especially in the clear, penetrating responses of the Palestrina Choir's fine treble line.

Overall, however, it was an afternoon for the soloists, with smooth, consistently engaging singing from the series's regular quartet of soprano Lynda Lee, alto Alison Browner, tenor Robin Tritschler and bass Nigel Williams.

Their solo movements were well complemented by fine obbligato playing, notably from the trio of oboists led by Matthew Manning.