Christie Taylor reviews Ballet Ireland's A Christmas Carol at the National Concert Hall, Michael Dungan saw the Haydn Trio Eisenstad at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin and Siobhán Long was at the Patrick O'Keeffe Festival in Castleisland, Co Kerry
A Christmas Carol: Ballet Ireland
National Concert Hall
Ballet Ireland's dancers moved with confidence and precision, exhibiting the kind of focused energy that usually results from strict coaching. The company welcomed new members Natasha O'Brien, Monique Mai, Kumiko Nakamura, Hannah Rudd and Giuliano Contadini like an old group rejuvenated by its newcomers.
The 16 dancers looked confined in the modest space of the National Concert Hall stage. They did their best, executing the evening-long interpretation of Charles Dickens's story while stepping in place and turning around themselves.
Morgann Runacre Temple offered relief from an otherwise dreary production with lively choreography buried in the second act. Temple tends to experiment with syncopated rhythms, changing patterns and contemporary gestures such as flexed feet and hands, so her contributions stood out against the more repetitive steps in the first half, which included Scrooge pantomiming to those around him.
Stephen Brennan was dependable as Scrooge, especially given the poor characterisation in the choreography. Today other ballet companies keep pantomime to a minimum unless it is critical to telling the story, and some of Scrooge's empty gestures created confusion.
It was difficult to register the exchange with his nephew - or was it an office clerk? - as he stood behind a podium writing with a feathered pen to the sound of a slowly ticking clock. A few other gestures, though, provoked laughter from the audience. Scrooge snoring himself to sleep - yawn! - was one of them.
Temple's choreography broke from the bleakness. Several couples kicked up their heels and twirled in upbeat tempo, changing direction and pace so the action looked kaleidoscopic.
When the dancers could cast aside repetitive movements used in other parts of the ballet, their talent peeked out. However, in much of A Christmas Carol, the dancers' technical and artistic capabilities remained as cloaked as Scrooge's generosity. Perhaps an apparition will appear in the night, as for Scrooge, increasing their chances for inventive choreography on a bigger stage.
Christie Taylor
Haydn Trio Eisenstad
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Mozart - Trios in B flat, KV 502, and C, KV 548. Bernd Richard Deutsch - Curriculum Vitae
The Vienna-based Haydn Trio Eisenstadt presented a sandwich concert with Mozart as the bread and a new piece by the young Austrian composer Bernd Richard Deutsch in the middle.
The latter - Curriculum Vitae - was composed this year and is one of a set of pieces called Writing Against War and dedicated to the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973).
The music is a response to three of her poems, duly provided in translation but rather opaque - even the briefest of spoken introductions might have proved helpful. Specifically, it might have helped make sense of Deutsch. Apart from his more amenable opening and closing moments, his piece labours its point, evoking an emphatic tension which soon becomes relentless and exhausting over 20 long minutes. It was like indulging the ranting of a stressed-out acquaintance.
There was considerable compensation in the Mozart trios, two masterpieces of the form for piano, violin and cello.
The performers approached them quite differently, creating a thick, velour texture for the Trio in B flat with its concerto- mimicking emphasis on extrovert display. It sometimes sounded more like Beethoven.
For me, preferable to velour was the silk of the Trio in C. Here Mozart's genial filigree sparkled in the piano while his lyricism emerged naturally and balanced from the violin and cello. Heaviness threatened to weigh down the feet in the dance of the final Allegro, but it remained a dance nonetheless.
Michael Dungan
Patrick O'Keeffe Festival
Castleisland, Co Kerry
Like a time capsule, Sheila Prendiville's pub offers ideal sanctuary for the Patrick O'Keeffe festival singers. Free from the incessant din of the trad soundtrack coming from street loudspeakers, local singer and historian Mike Kenny and friends can bask in the luxuriant delights of The Boys of Barr Na Sráide amid the clove rock, bullseyes and Sunlight soap, with artist Peter Hill's fine evocation of the late, lamented cinema, the Astor, peeping out of the town calendar behind the till.
What would Patrick O'Keeffe make of all this merry-making? A Sliabh Luachra fiddler who, more often than not, found that there was no room at the inn, his bare- knuckle style of playing left an indelible mark. At the back of the Crown Hotel, Séamus Creagh, Jackie Daly, Paul De Grae, Connie O'Connell and Donal O'Connor conjured a rake of tunes with orchestral authority, the swathe of fiddles calling every tune.
Edmonton fiddler Jay Kuchinsky lent some fleeting bluegrass, but only while his compadres drew breath in between The Old Grey Goose and The Banks of Sullane.
Aside from the grand concert that featured everyone from Joe Burke to Niamh Parsons, the humdinger session of the weekend was led by Paudie O'Connor and Aoife O'Keeffe in The Poet's Inn.
A handful of Castleisland's publicans have not yet learned the etiquette of a session (must we be bombarded by Sky Sports rugby reruns ad infinitum?), but the musicians valiantly played on.
O'Connor's accordion was a genteel driver, scaffolded by O'Keeffe's lithe fiddle. Creagh was eventually lured to the melee, a fitting end to a marathon day of music. If only the town's merchants could still their tills long enough to enjoy the tunes.
Siobhán Long
