A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.
Ute Lemper
(Dublin Theatre Festival)
Olympia, Dublin.
It is a tribute to Ute Lemper's unique ability to dismantle a cliche, that you can gaze up at a statuesque blonde cabaret artist, of German birth and American citizenship, and never feel distracted by the spectre of Marlene Dietrich. The chanteuses may share many things - a dry wit, a kinship with the music of Weimar and Weill, an alluring and dangerous femininity - but Lemper's cabaret is entirely her own.
Invited on a journey that crosses the borders of nation and history for the opening of the Dublin Theatre Festival, audiences might have initially questioned the theatrical qualities of Lemper's show. But as she forged a path from Jacques Brel to Edith Piaf, or found echoes of Weill's Berlin in the divided city of the 1980s, Lemper transformed every song into a bravura performance.
Hers is not a cabaret caked in the dust of nostalgia. Considerably less interested in torch songs than in slow fuses and fiery explosions of jazz, Lemper and her four-piece band offered music with few soft edges. Brel's Amsterdam, for instance, could never be mistaken for a pleasant sea shanty, but, through dizzying verses alternating in French and English, Lemper's emphasis is firmly on the title's last syllable. Like the chaotic coda to one Piaf tribute, L'Accordéoniste, Lemper's voice hovers between agony and ecstasy, her smile flirting with a sneer, her band rushing after her with accelerating, loosening cycles.
The march of history also seems to attain such dizzy motion, like a fairground carousel spinning into collapse. "All journeys lead to Berlin," Lemper softly announces, "And they end there too." Her between-song manner may be serene, but gathering together the shady characters of The Threepenny Opera - "the Johnnies, the Jennies and the Jimmies" - or the nightclub singer of The Blue Angel (where Dietrich becomes harder to ignore) Lemper's political intentions steadily become more pointed. "Blood is blood and faith is faith," she sings in the Army Song, "and the army is still recruiting". For all her intriguing detours into her own compositions or sung poetry in Arabic and Yiddish, Lemper knows that - in cabaret at least - all journeys lead to Mack The Knife. Introducing the tune with an innocuous whistle, inviting her audience to join in the refrain, she soon arches her eyebrows over its success: the contrapuntal Weill would have abhorred such easy familiarity, while its royalties turned Brecht into "a Marxist who drove a Mercedes".
Restoring menace to its verses and finding sudden violent eruptions within its melody, Lemper honours and furthers the tradition of cabaret. Her journey may seem familiar, but her destination felt ferocious and new.
Peter Crawley
NCC/Antunes
National Gallery, Dublin
Titled The French Connection, the National Chamber Choir's autumn tour programme consists of 20th-century and contemporary works.
From native French composers, there are sumptuous and sophisticated cycles by Debussy (Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orléans), Ravel (Trois Chansons), Poulenc (Un soir de neige) and Françaix (Trois Poèmes de Paul Valéry).
And with the sterile monotones of L (2002) by Philippe Leroux, there's a glimpse too of an entirely different facet of French choral music.
Two items with French associations provide more welcome contrast to the programme's rich core of Impressionism. One is the strikingly original Mass for double choir by francophone Swiss composer Frank Martin, a work with the rare quality of being comprehensible in a language all of its own.
The other is Dieppe, a new commission from Irish composer Deirdre McKay which captures the haiku-like mood of Beckett's single-stanza French poem with Baltic economy of expression.
McKay's subtle arrangement of common materials makes for one of the programme's few moments of genuine repose. Generally, it's a tour de force of technical ambition and fearlessness wholly characteristic of the NCC's artistic director Celso Antunes. There are no apparent limits to the demands he places on his forces - and very few to what they can deliver.
Too bad that the composers' tempo directions are never quite fast enough for Antunes, nor their dynamic and articulation marks quite exaggerated enough for him. There must always be thrill, there must always be energy, and in this drugged-up state the music loses much of its persuasive power.
This, then, is the NCC on heady, exciting and impressive form. But in the present instance, that would seem to be incompatible with satisfying accounts of some delicate and discriminating repertoire.
Tour continues in Belfast (tomorrow), Galway (Tuesday), Clones (Wednesday), Drogheda (Thursday).
Andrew Johnstone
András Schiff (piano)
NCH, Dublin
Beethoven - Sonatas in G Op 31 No 1 in D minor Op 31 No 2 (Tempest) in E flat Op 31 No 3 in C Op 53 (Waldstein)
Hungarian pianist András Schiff was back in Dublin on Thursday, giving Irish listeners a sample of his ongoing Beethoven sonata cycle in the first concert of a chamber music weekend at the National Concert Hall.
Schiff's playing of Beethoven somehow managed to be both patrician and racy. The effect was fascinating if a little strange, rather like Beethoven delivered with an unfailingly fluent but slightly foreign accent. There was moment after moment to savour in the delivery, but the message somehow remained slightly elusive.
The patrician quality came in part from the choice of instrument, a Viennese Bösendorfer rather than the familiar German Steinway. In Schiff's hands the Bösendorfer generally speaks with a softer tone and more gentle edge, though in reserve is an overdrive he rarely calls on, which can deliver thunder in the bass and dazzling brightness in the upper treble.
Schiff mostly contented himself with the instrument's lightness and adaptability. The definition of detail was unusually sharp, and provided a kind of internal illumination that can highlight shapes and relationships that normally bask in shadow.
There wasn't a single movement in the whole evening which didn't cast some detail in a new light, melodic lines which asserted themselves without the slightest sense of dynamic striving, left hand chords which were effortlessly drained of excessive weight, staccato so dry it hardly lingered in the air at all.
Not everything gelled with full persuasiveness. Schiff seemed to like speedy runs for their own sake, he struck attitudes with rubato which diverted the music's flow, savouring the moment at the expense of the bigger picture. But he never shirked any risky undertakings, and impressively stayed the course for some of the whirlwind implications of his chosen tempos.
At the evening's end, the audience's thirst for encores was quenched by two of Schubert's Moments musicaux. The contrast with the Beethoven was extraordinary. In Schubert, Schiff's sensual coaxing seemed to provide the perfect match that had eluded him in the Beethoven.
Michael Dervan
Gottfried Helnwein Modern Sleep
Fenton Gallery, Cork
The child as a symbol of hope, purity and innocence triggers a protective reflex that taps into society's instinct to cherish and protect its young.
Any tarnishing of this ideal is naturally going to provoke controversy, with art, literature and advertising strewn with instances of iconoclasts who have upset the moral applecart. (Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw, the sinister paintings of Balthus, or the candid photographs by Sally Mann, are all examples.)
It is within such company that Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein rests, as his controversial works cause people to sit up and take notice whenever he exhibits. Certainly, shocking images of deformed babies, Nazi ephemera and pseudo-religious overtones are not for the faint-hearted. However, the majority of the portrait paintings on show in the current exhibition at the Fenton are perhaps more palatable for the general viewer, as the imagery is comparatively sedate in terms of narrative and symbolism.
Indeed, the hyper-realist painting style will certainly captivate and astound the viewer. The painstaking detail draws you into the picture as you attempt to disentangle the overlap between painting and photographic techniques. The illusion partly explained through his method of tracing images from photographic projections - a precedent previously exploited through the use of a camera obscura, by among others, Vermeer and Caneletto.
However, the exquisite control of the paint seduces the viewer into a false sense of security, as the vivid representation of the children demonstrates a worldly awareness that belies their tender age. Expressions range from melancholic to near comatose, unsettlingly ecstatic to the distraught. The complex gamut of human emotion means, that yes, these young people are engaging for the spectator. But also, the overtones are distinctly menacing and at times, make for uncomfortable viewing.
Runs until October 7th
Mark Ewart
