Irish Times writers review a selection of arts events.
Simon Trpceski, National Concert Hall, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Rachmaninov - Sonata No 2 (1931). Scriabin - Sonata No 5. Prokofiev - Sonata No 6
The Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski, who was born in 1979, took second prize at the London International Piano Competition in 2000 and made his Wigmore Hall début the following year, when he was also taken up by the BBC's New Generation Artists scheme. To top all this, for a pianist still in his 20s, his début CD for EMI won a Gramophone Award last year.
He made his Irish début in a BBC recital in Belfast last May, part of which (the sonatas by Rachmaninov and Scriabin) he repeated for his first Dublin appearance, at the National Concert Hall on Sunday, substituting Prokofiev's substantial Sixth Sonata for the shorter group of Stravinsky studies he played in Belfast.
Rachmaninov's Second Sonata is a work whose time seems to have come. It has become a piece that audiences at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition have learned to fear, from overexposure as a demonstration of pianistic workout rather than a musical experience.
Trpceski is a well-endowed player, with a technical facility ready for all the pitfalls the sonata presents. He comes across as someone whose strength and ability to project are greatest in his left hand, and this resulted in some unusual perspectives, not only in the Rachmaninov but throughout.
He did, however, give the impression of being rather too taken up with the pleasure of getting through large quantities of notes with ease. There's an expansiveness in the Rachmaninov, a piece in which the harmonic movement is very slow indeed, that the sheer busyness of his playing tended to mask, and the more lyrical passages came across as too matter-of-fact.
Again, in both Scriabin and Prokofiev, it was the immediate technical display that most caught the attention. He didn't quite enable the strange, perfumed radiance of Scriabin to co-exist with the music's febrile agitation, and there are layers of dark disturbance in the Prokofiev that this rather too noisy account failed to reveal.
Two encores reinforced the impression that, at this stage in Trpceski's career, the delights of the fleet finger are still capable of outweighing more fundamental considerations.
Alim Qasimov, Liberty Hall Centre, Dublin
Peter Crawley
Somewhere between supplication and serenity, Alim Qasimov folds himself onto a pillow, sighs deeply, then slowly gives voice to the poetry and praise of Azerbaijani mugham singing. His audience sinks into the moulded plushness of Liberty Hall's intimate auditorium, awaiting spiritual transcendence - Qasimov's, if not necessarily their own.
Mugham takes time. For the silver-haired Qasimov, command of its improvisatory techniques and modal form has grown since childhood. Even in the shortened suites of this performance the movement is gradual, cautious, its tone guided by pivots of emotion. Mainly love.
New listeners may wander unfamiliar through its free metre and microtonal complexity, yet the sweeping lulls and sudden exhortations of Qasimov's voice make it anything but forbidding. When the rhythm materialises it is a heartbeat.
As such, mugham traverses the sacred and secular, a flexibility that withstood the cultural suffocation of Soviet rule.
Quasimov's performance is aptly lithe; he floats his gaval, a large tambourine, as though the air across it will decide the tempo. Malik Mansurov's alternately droning and spryly melodic tar, a long-necked lute, trades graceful or prickly phrases with Rauf Islamov's fiddle-like kamanche. Ghazals, or Islamic poems, ululated to the heavens may be ancient in origin, but each delivery is a rebirth.
Underpinning such exhortations is a strict discipline that marks Qasimov's face with contemplation, like a chess master considering his next move. Bowing quick and so low his chest almost brushes the platform, his vocal releases come with startling suddenness and unpredictable flourishes. One hand clasps his ear, the other reaches upwards; music courses through him and from him.
When such fervour becomes almost unbearable the music bows out with a shudder. Unhindered by cultural distance or the necessity of explanation, the audience leap to their feet. In the words of another group of musical adventurers, love is all you need.
Canticum Novum, Orchestra of St Cecilia/Spratt, St Ann's Church, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Bach - Cantatas 166, 86, 87, 183
On Sunday afternoon the Orchestra of St Cecilia began the fourth year of its projected 10-year survey of Bach's complete church cantatas. The programme presented works from the post-Easter period, the point in the Lutheran church calendar where the series left off last year.
All four cantatas opened with short bass movements containing the utterances of Christ.
Nigel Williams was resonant and expressive, ranging from a lighter tone for Christ asking his disciples "Where goest thou?", in No 166, to a darker, foreboding character for No 183, when Christ warns: "Whoever kills you will think he is doing God a service."
Each cantata also featured alto solos affirming devotional confidence in God. There was consistency without uniformity across these four movements in music that conveys warmth and joy, always beautifully expressed by the incisive responses of mezzo-soprano Alison Browner.
In her aria beseeching God for guidance from Cantata No 183, soprano Lynda Lee was brighter but somehow less personal in manner than Browner.
Tenor Robin Tritschler, despite suffering from a cold, was poignant in the flowing lines and long-held notes of "Ich will an den Himmel denken" ("I will think of heaven") in No 166.
This movement also featured the day's best instrumental playing in a tender obbligato part for oboe d'amore played by Matthew Manning.
Canticum Novum, composed of former Irish Youth Choir members, was well balanced and blended in its brief but critical role. Conductor Geoffrey Spratt judged perfectly the ebb and flow of each cantata's closing chorale.
Series continues weekly until March 7th
Concorde, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
Martin Adams
Scott McLaughlin - Splinter And Sharde A Cirque D'Étoiles. Martin Butler - Bluegrass Variations. Benedict Connolly - (Trying For) Tabula Rasa. Deirdre Gribbin - Hells Kells. Derek Anthony Kelly - Three Haiku Lyrics Of Basho. Ed Bennett - No Attachment To Dust
Our incompetence with planning can have surprising benefits. Less than a week before they were due to play in the National Gallery of Ireland's Shaw Room, Concorde were evicted and sent to the winter garden of the Millennium wing because of an EU meeting nearby.
The acoustics are cavernous and background noise is constant. Nevertheless, engagement between audience and performers was unusually strong, partly because they were on top of one another, partly because one had to listen hard. The reverential bubble of concert life was well and truly pricked.
The line-up of six short works for various groupings and instruments lasted just over an hour and included an interesting range of styles. The shimmering textures of Scott McLaughlin's Splinter And Sharde A Cirque D'Étoiles sounded well in the resonant acoustics.
So did Deirdre Gribbin's sensitive exploration of solo accordion in Hells Kells, excellently performed by Dermot Dunne. Elaine Clark's strong, shapely playing was utterly persuasive in the only non-Irish work on the programme, Martin Butler's Bluegrass Variations. The title speaks for itself.
Japanese poetry and Zen were the respective mainsprings of Derek Anthony Kelly's neat and brief Three Haiku Lyrics Of Basho and Ed Bennett's colourful No Attachment To Dust.
Yet one of the most striking pieces came from the youngest composer, the Dublin-born Leaving Certificate student Benedict Connolly. His (Trying For) Tabula Rasa has rough moments and strong personality. He's a young man with ideas.
This absorbing concert was the first promotion in the Republic by the Society for the Promotion of New Music - and a welcome move by a UK-based organisation (Gribbin is its artistic director) that for 60 years has been at the forefront of promoting new music. It can only expand our horizons as well as theirs.
