Martin Adams was at the National Concert Hall for the NSO's new season. Ray Comiskey was enraptured by the Electric Sufi, Dhafer Youseff while Mark Heart went along to the West Cork Arts Centre to view the Living Landscapes exhibition.
Catherine Leonard (violin)/NSO/ Gerhard Markson at the National Concert Hall
Academic Festival Overture Brahms
Violin Concerto in E minor Mendelssohn
Symphony No 6 (Pastoral) Beethoven
The National Symphony Orchestra's new season got off to a strong start on Friday night. In a programme which would have been familiar to most members of the large audience in the National Concert Hall, the NSO's principal conductor, Gerhard Markson, was in characteristic form. Music which has strong performing traditions was thought out afresh, and the orchestra was responsive to interpretations which often did things differently from those traditions.
Brahms's Academic Festival Overture opened like a journey of discovery, gradually getting into its stride, and then emerging as a vigorous rattlebag of student songs. Steady tempo, with no hint of playing to the gallery, was one of the most notable aspects of this overture, and of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral). Markson's spacious reading of the "Pastoral" captured the vigour of the storm movement and of the peasants' dance, yet was focused on the broad tranquillity of the composer's bucolic recollections.
Some beautifully shaped and coloured wind playing typified attention to detail, and the many transitions between sections were impeccably timed. While the performance was about as under-stated as is possible with this piece, it knew exactly what it was trying to achieve, and did so.
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor has deservedly been described as a perfect piece of music.
Catherine Leonard's playing of the solo part lived up to that reputation, in the first two movements at least. While her sound was rarely large she achieved, without over-striving, flashes of intense passion.
That, added to an to an excellent control of tone and shaping, produced a sense of ecstatic, spontaneous invention; and she had strong support from the NSO. At the end everyone looked pleased. And so they should be, for this was an elevating performance, full of natural, musicianly insight. - Martin Adams
Dhafer Youssef: Electric Sufi, The Shelter
Anyone who believes that the spiritual and the sensual are incompatible would have heard that proposition seriously challenged by the visit of the Tunisian Dhafer Youssef's Electric Sufi to The Shelter last Friday. Organised by The Improvised Music Company, the concert was yet another compelling example of how jazz continues to evolve and embrace diverse musical cultures - in this case the music of north Africa, both secular and religious.
In the vocal approach of the leader, a gifted exponent of the oud, a string instrument widely use in north Africa and the Middle and Near East, there were also echoes of Portuguese fado (and, even remotely, Irish sean nós singing). His vocal range, probably somewhere round three octaves, allowed a dramatic style of singing, partly invocational, partly declamatory, which nevertheless fitted seamlessly into this marriage of musical cultures.
That the mix worked so brilliantly is a tribute to the calibre of the musicians involved. Sharing the front line with the oud was the excellent Austrian guitarist, Wolfgang Muthspiel, a superb bassist, Dieter Ilg - both longtime collaborators of Youssef - and an excellent French drummer, Phillipe Garcia.
Much of the music they played, especially in the first set, offered comparatively little harmonic movement. The interest lay in the fresh lines produced by the oud and guitar, in the rhythms generated by them and Garcia against the fulcrum of Ilg's bass, and in the textures generated by Youssef's remarkable vocal style and the contrasting timbres of the two stringed instruments.
As such, the approach does have limitations, as well as rewards. It allows soloists of the calibre of Youssef and Muthspiel considerable linear and rhythmic freedom, to which they responded with fresh and virtually cliché-free playing; as a soloist, too, the frequently featured Ilg proved to be a plangently inventive performer.
Perhaps most impressive of all was the evidence that this was a tightly-knit group, as well as a collection of gifted soloists. At the end a packed audience gave the quartet a standing ovation. - Ray Comiskey
Living Landscape: European Topographies, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen
After a six-year hiatus Living Landscape has returned with a revised selection policy which has extended to artists working in Scotland, along with those based in Ireland. This curatorial reconstitution means that potentially the event could involve a different EU state each year, thereby offering a wide variety of intriguing social and political contexts.
As with its previous incarnation, the definition of landscape takes the broadest possible remit, with the physical experience often replaced by emotional, symbolic or purely conceptual concerns. Amish Fluting's contribution is a forthright example of the latter, where two small sheets of paper hold written information on the locations encountered while travelling. Text-based work also features strongly in Snæbjörndóttir and Wilson's contribution as a detailed travelogue is balanced against an enigmatic photograph of a wild dog or wolf. While Anne Bevan and Ian Stephen use sculptural materials to relate a physically tactile essence of the landscape.
Cóilín Murray's painting, Spiderwoman Rocks 1, is a vibrant, energetic affair, with violently hot colours swirling together with aplomb. In contrast, a photograph by Gray Coley showing the brooding calm of an expansive sea stretching to the horizon has a sedate beauty. - Mark Heart
