A look at the world of the arts today
Ireland's Finest in Concert
National Concert Hall
The young fogeyism of MC Ryan Tubridy was the perfect match for the National Concert Hall's silver jubilee celebrations, amid a programme which was so safe it could've inoculated the entire audience against all manner of vile contagion.
Crowd-pleasing conservatism marked the night's unfailingly pleasant roster, with everyone from the Chieftains and James Galway to Sharon Shannon, Carlos Núñez and Brian Kennedy putting their weight behind the celebrations as if it was a boulder to be pushed uphill.
The luxuriant set proved surprisingly dextrous in hammocking a swathe of tempers and moods. Eimear Quinn extolled the virtues of The Voice, Paul Brady stretched his own vocals refreshingly on a highly orchestrated Living For The Corporation and Brian Kennedy and Colm Wilkinson, neither artist on conversational terms with subtlety on the night, emoted enough for all of us. Like a method actor on speed, Wilkinson didn't so much sing as exhort us to Bring Him Home, and how we wished someone would, in the end.
The real highlights of the night were the classical musicians. Finghin Collins's fleeting Flight Of The Bumble Bee was a divine experiment in artistic minimalism, a master class in letting the music talk for itself. Cara O'Sullivan and Anthony Kearns delivered a bravura performance with Brindisi and violinist Fionnuala Hunt strode through Piazzolla's Libertango with subtle economy.
Shaun Davey's Silver Jubilee - A Musical Tribute to the National Concert Hall, featured fluid flautist Bill Dowdall and organist David Adams, both of whom happily basked in the modest celebratory mood of the piece, although the percussion at times threatened to overwhelm them with a tsunami-like fervour.
James and Jeanne Galway offered a pristine duet of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, his unquestionable authority yielding to her delicate shading with the ease of a pair who can anticipate one another's every breath.
The real revelation of the evening was Navan man and pianist Brian Byrne, whose performance of Caravan revealed an arranger with chutzpah. The orchestra of the National Concert Hall, with conductor David Brophy, had no difficulty matching Byrne's brio, nor in embracing each artist's arrangements with a subtlety and restraint worn lightly.
A repertoire long on familiarity and reassurance, but short of a bold brush stroke to signal the way forward. Anniversaries are a welcome opportunity to celebrate the past, but the Concert Hall missed an opportunity to point even an exploratory finger into the future.
Siobhán Long
UMO Jazz Orchestra
O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin
Anyone who remembers hearing Finland's UMO Jazz Orchestra on its first visit in 1999 would surely have been even more impressed by the current edition of this long-running big band. Brought here by the Improvised Music Company with the help of the Finnish Embassy, it was magnificent.
This is a band unfazed by anything - complex scores, changes of tempo and time signature, even occasional ventures into controlled measures of freedom, all were executed with an almost nonchalant aplomb that was, at times, staggering in its power and precision.
One notable feature of the orchestra was the fact that it didn't have to rely on a powerhouse rhythm section clearly driven by the drummer, or on particularly distinctive soloists to establish its identity. This is essentially a writer's band, with each piece an edifice of orchestral colours, evoking a kaleidoscopic range of moods in which the rhythm section was simply one component in the musical architecture.
And the voicings. While the reed section had the now-customary doubling offering a spread of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones, along with flutes, clarinet and bass clarinet, the deft and constant switching of voicings and instruments within the section - and its blending with trumpets (also doubling flugelhorns) and trombones - produced constant surprise and delight.
At times the orchestral invention was almost too much. The first three pieces, Frozen Petals, Otava and Kuu Ulvoo, were hugely complex scores and the programming needed the light and shade of less complicated moments. And, just at that point, this was signalled by a witty, humorous Tango Catastrophique, followed by a slow exercise in pastel colours, Indigo, and a kind of ironic piece, Kalvean Immen Tarina, about a pale maiden confronted with romantic disaster.
Another piece, the slow Kivelle, dispensed with drums altogether without any loss of rhythmic pulse or impetus, while the pre-encore programme ended with Simeoni, itself almost a summation of this great band's ability to shift seamlessly through all the colours of the orchestra spectrum.
And, to wind up a gripping concert on a lighter note, the band produced a spectacular ensemble rendition of Monteverdi's Lasciate i Mondi, and finished with a swinging blues, Hard Weekend, which gave the group's hugely capable instrumentalists further chances to solo.
Ray Comiskey
RTÉ NSO/Anissimov
NCH, Dublin
Mussorgsky - St John's Night on the Bare Mountain. Britten - Piano Concerto. Shostakovich - Symphony No 14
"Please don't try to make things nice," the composer Charles Ives once noted to a copyist, adding "All the wrong notes are right." Mussorgsky might well have needed to issue a similar caution about his St John's Night on the Bare Mountain, the orchestral depiction of a witches' sabbath he wrote in 1867.
Unfortunately, he was five years in his grave when Rimsky-Korsakov prepared the colourful but much-sanitised version that is most often heard today. The original was not published until 1968, and since that time conductors have been slow to embrace the intentionally crude clashes of Mussorgsky's vision.
Rimsky, of course, knew about the original. Mussorgsky had written to him when the ink was hardly dry, and quoted him passages from the score that would upset conservative ears, including one about which he wrote, "these are the witches glorifying Satan - as you can see, stark naked, barbarous and filthy".
Alexander Anissimov opened this programme with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with a violent, no-holds barred account that seemed fully in keeping with the unholy atmosphere that the composer had in mind.
Benjamin Britten's early Piano Concerto might look like an odd man out in an otherwise Russian programme. But there's a clear Russian influence on the music, via Prokofiev, and Britten was the dedicatee of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony, which itself includes some genuflections in Britten's direction.
The Piano Concerto, in which the composer said he set out to exploit "various important characteristics of the pianoforte, such as its enormous compass, its percussive quality, and its suitability for figuration," opens with a brash Toccata.
Friday's soloist, Peter Donohoe, unleashed it with a sharp-toned, apparently boundless energy, and the punchiness of his approach was reflected in the sometimes too blunt, high-impact orchestral playing encouraged by Anissimov.
Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 followed on from his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. It's as much song-cycle as symphony - it's a deeply-affecting setting of 11 death-related poems by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbeker and Rilke for soprano and bass, with a chamber orchestra of strings and percussion.
Anissimov set aside the composer's specified chamber scoring in favour of a much increased string strength. The burliness of tone that resulted was not at all times to the music's advantage. Dispensing with the fragility of melodic lines given to single instruments is not something guaranteed to bring improvements to a work concerned with death.
Soprano Oksana Dyka struggled at times to thin her voice to the demands of the score, and sounded most comfortable when she could let herself go. Baritone Sergei Leiferkus may not have quite the vocal weight for a part actually written for a bass, but he has all the gravitas of manner required, and delivered the texts with sensitivity and understanding.
Michael Dervan
Gnarls Barkley
Vicar Street, Dublin
How many layers of disguise does it take to render familiar musicians unrecognisable? Ask Brian Burton and Thomas Callaway. Separately they trade as super-producer Danger Mouse and neo-soul star Cee-Lo Green, but together they go by the name Gnarls Barkley - the biggest and best pop act of the year.
For this gig, however, they have been replaced by an unreconstructed hair-metal group called Brushfire; its 12 members shrink-wrapped in spandex and weighed down by spiky fright wigs. The duo's reputation for dressing up with their backing band precedes them - raiding the wardrobes of Star Wars, School of Rock and Austin Powers - but even if their alter ego has now acquired an alter ego, there's no mistaking the sound.
A dollop of soul, a dash of Motown, a liberal sprinkling of new-wave riffs and hip-hop beats - songs such as Go Go Gadget Gospel and St Elsewhere belong to no particular territory or time. Crazy, for instance, the single it seemed impossible to tire of hearing (before the group had it deleted on its ninth week at No 1), came off as both pleasingly vintage and effortlessly modern.
Such contradictions are deliriously reconciled in a fun and brash performance, hampered only by an indistinct mix that tucks Green's resonant vocals behind the bass. The lurid outfits give the singer ample opportunity for smiling Spinal Tap-isms - right down to an absurdly protruding codpiece - yet there's a subtle seam of anguish in his songs.
From the dark meditations and menacing breakbeats of Just A Thought to the creepy lyrics of Necromancer, Green may have one of the most disturbing muses in mainstream pop.
But between his beaming stage persona - preaching energy transference, spiritual harmony and the liberation of girls from their clothing - and Danger Mouse's spry samples and slinky keyboards, any bleaker identity is playfully concealed.
The night whizzes by on this blend of solemnity and shtick, until Crazy arrives, introduced by Green as an "instant classic". Gloriously performed, rapturously received, but clearly threatening to eclipse the band, when it ends Green seems relieved. "Now we can move on," he smiles. For that to happen, however, they may need a heavier disguise.
Peter Crawley
