Irit Stark (soprano),Andrew Quartermain (piano)Hugh Lane Gallery, DublinSingers who are at home with the operatic repertoire are not always comfortable in the more intimate world of lieder. The power and stridency that served Irit Stark well in her selection of operatic arias by Boito, Puccini, Verdi and Massenet was simply not suitable for the songs of Brahms and Strauss.
The pressure on the voice, allied to a persistent vibrato, distorted the words and threatened to distort the melodies. Even with the texts in one's hand, it was difficult to make out what she was singing.
Three songs in Hebrew, by the first generation of Israeli composers, showed the singer in a more favourable light, although they belong to the same musical tradition as Brahms and Strauss. Perhaps her growing up in Jerusalem gave Stark a special understanding of the pieces.
The most pleasurable part of Sunday's recital was the consistently intelligent and sensitive accompaniments of Andrew Quartermain, both in the lieder and the operatic excerpts.
In Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro, Stark not only brought out the drama but also displayed an unsuspected capability for expressing tenderness. Verdi's Ritorssa Vincitor was equally wide-ranging in its effectiveness, but Massenet's Pleurez! Pleurez, Mes Yeux!, with its implied invitation to tear a passion to tatters, badly needed its proper context in Le Cid to make its histrionics acceptable.
By Douglas Sealy
David Adams (harpsichord)
St Ann's Church, Dublin
Italian ConcertoBach
French Overture BWV831Bach
Partita No 4 BWV828Bach
David Adams's harpsichord recital last Sunday afternoon was substantial and wholesome. In the series designed around Bach's cantatas, it was the second concert and the first of two devoted to instrumental music.
The programme consisted of music from the second part of Bach's Clavierübung, written for a two-manual instrument, in a keyboard equivalent of orchestral style.
Virtuosity served the Italian Concerto's musical structure. While there was something impish in Adams's occasional twist of tempo, the imp was genial and wise, able to show that even in this most highly designed music, things are rarely what they seem.
The performance of "artified" dance suites such as Bach's partitas has often been the subject of doctrinaire views and practice. Should such music be played in strict time, as this music's utilitarian models would have been? One of the most refreshing aspects of this recital was that the playing's naturalness declared such controversies redundant.
Slow, flexible pacing revealed the allemande of Partita No 4 In D, BWV828, as a dance-become-aria. The free-running, even timing of the same partita's fugal gigue felt perfect for a transformed rustic dance.
The almost-proportional speeds of the movements in the French Overture In B Minor, BWV831, underlined the French, ballet-based origins of the music and did justice to the individuality of each dance. While I have heard more technically dazzling harpsichord-playing, the unfailing musicality of this recital offered rich rewards.
By Martin Adams
• Series continues on Sunday, at 3.30 p.m., with Canzona Chamber Choir and the Orchestra of St Cecilia, conducted by Blánaid Murphy
RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Laurent Wagner
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Symphony No 49 (La Passione)Haydn
Piano Concerto No 1Shostakovich
Egmont OvertureBeethoven
Symphony No 9Shostakovich
Laurent Wagner and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra can be a fruitful combination. The French-born conductor has already directed the orchestra in Opera Ireland's productions of Salome (1999) and Kátya Kabanová (2000); on Friday, it was a programme of classical and 20th-century music.
The differences between the first and second halves of the concert were striking. While Haydn's Symphony No 49 had dash, detail was too indistinct for music with such clear gestures. The playing did not quite achieve its objectives, although those were clear enough.
In Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No 1, Míceál O'Rourke was a spry and passionate soloist. Yet this performance's genial aspects were dominated by a mismatch between the almost neoclassical precision of Shostakovich's writing and a splashy style of playing, from orchestra and soloist.
As with the Haydn, there was an impression of things not working as they might have done had there been more discipline all round.
With Beethoven's Egmont Overture, the concert moved onto another level. Fast speeds made everything seem a little breathless. Yet the achievements in orchestral discipline were impressive, and the intensity of the playing helped make this performance as uplifting as one would hope for in this most dramatic of overtures.
All those strengths were present in Shostakovich's Symphony No 9, a work whose interpretative challenges are probably greater than its technical ones. Wagner played it straight and here, at least, neoclassical sharpness was realised. A work that tempts one into parody felt purely musical, and was all the more impressive for that. The orchestral playing was full of colour - and that, too, was impressive, for it was so natural one did not readily notice it.
By Martin Adams
