Irish Times writers review RTÉ Concert Orchestra at the Helix, the Ulster Orchestra at the Millennium Forum, Colm Carey at the Ulster Hall and Hickey and Zuk at the Hugh Lane Gallery.
Weithaas, RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Laurent Wagner
The Helix, Dublin
By Martin Adams
Beethoven - Violin Concerto. Zemlinsky - Sinfonietta. Haydn - Symphony No 103
(Drum Roll)
It is hard to believe that Laurent Wagner is still in his first year as principal conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. The first concert in the Tales from Vienna series seemed to have far more experience behind it than that, even though one area that still needs attention is precise tuning across the woodwind section.
The series's wide-ranging, adventurous approach was kicked off in style by the advertised "preconcert surprise", when members of the orchestra gathered in the Helix's foyer to play zany chamber-music arrangements of Strauss waltzes, made by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. That's the motto: not just the reliable kings but the later figures too.
In Beethoven's Violin Concerto the soloist was Antje Weithaas. She showed plenty of power, virtuosity and personality, all in the right place, at the service of beautifully coloured and phrased design. With each movement impeccably characterised and contrasted with its neighbours, this was a performance that made you think this was how it should go.
The responsive orchestral playing depended as much on listening as on watching the conductor. That impression was reinforced by the lively account of Haydn's Symphony No 103 (Drum Roll): disciplined, full of life and earthy but never earthbound.
The promise of this series and of Wagner's work with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra was embodied in the Sinfonietta by Zemlinsky, who died in 1942, aged 71. This gripping piece, which was composed in 1934, has the insistent intensity and virtuosity that one associates with its composer's most famous pupil, Schoenberg.
The Sinfonietta does not just brim with counterpoint of notes - lots of them. It is driven by a counterpoint of overlapping, contrasted gestures. The notes were well handled and never obscured the clarity of the second, much more important feature. Great stuff.
Series continues on Friday in St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny, and on Saturday at the Helix, with music by Schubert, Schoenberg, Haydn and Mozart.
Ulster Orchestra/Nicholas Kok
Millennium Forum, Derry
Dermot Gault
Brahms - Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No 1. Beethoven - Symphony No 5
The Millennium Forum in Derry is a handsome and versatile building, and so it is unfortunate that it is not a more successful venue for orchestral concerts. The sound is dry and flat, exposing the slightest flaw while doing nothing to give the music-making a friendly ambience.
The Brahms Variations were well played, with every detail in place, but the individual variations were undercharacterised and the performance just didn't build to its conclusion. It wasn't simply a matter of the acoustics, although it didn't help that the wind sounded so recessed, at least from the stalls. Nicholas Kok took the first movement of the Beethoven at a tempo that gave the players room to phrase sympathetically and articulate clearly, and the absence of hurry was welcome. But the heroic fire was missing, and even the finale, at a more spirited tempo, never really took flight.
The acoustics were particularly unhelpful in the concerto. The Millennium Forum can in fact be a friendly venue for a solo piano, but when the piano is pushed to the front of the rather cramped stage in front of the orchestra it sounds both bare and isolated. Any pianist would have to work especially hard to make an impression under such conditions.
Ruth McGinley played the opening chords without forcing the tone and without undue aggressiveness, but elsewhere the playing could have been more assured and responsive, and there were some less than secure moments. The Ulster Orchestra and Nicholas Kok were, however, sympathetic partners.
Colm Carey, organ
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Dermot Gault
Stanford - Concert Piece for Organ and Orchestra. Haydn - Five Pieces for Mechanical Clock. Widor - Allegro vivace from Symphony No 5. Andrew Johnstone - Irish Airs and Dances. Rheinberger - Organ Concerto No 2 in G minor
This concert, which saw the inauguration of Colm Carey as Belfast city organist, took us away from the highways of the Ulster Orchestra's recent Beethoven cycle and into the byways of the organ repertoire.
Stanford's Concert Piece made an apt opening item, in that it showed off the player and the instrument, but despite coming to a resounding close the material was strangely unmemorable. Rheinberger's Second Concerto was fresher and more effective.
Both works were well accompanied by the Ulster Orchestra under Fergus Shiel, who I believe has not appeared with the Ulster Orchestra before now.
On his own, Carey combined technical fluency with a tasteful and imaginative command of the organ's colouristic resources in the Widor Variations which begin his Fifth Symphony, the one which ends with the famous toccata. The Haydn miniatures written for a mechanical organ were played on a few very light stops, and the result was charming. The Mulholland Grand Organ isn't supposed to be good at pieces like this, but in Carey's hands they sparkled.
Andrew Johnstone's commissioned arrangement of Irish airs and dances was also judiciously registered and had some effective moments. The idea of traditional Irish music on the organ is intriguing, even if some of the melodies lent themselves to the instrument more than others.
Throughout, Carey's registration showed skill and discretion, reserving the organ's louder stops for moments of maximum impact. The concert made us aware again of what a fine instrument we have in the Ulster Hall organ.
Hickey, Zuk
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Debussy - Cello Sonata. James Wilson - Chiaroscuro. Szymanowski - Mazurkas Op 50
Nos 1 & 2. Inci Özdil - Reincarnation Of Blue. Martinu - Cello Sonata No 1
Sunday's Hugh Lane recital by Peter Hickey and Patrick Zuk offered two sonatas for cello and piano, two works for solo cello and the first two of Szymanowski's Op 50 mazurkas for solo piano.
The greatest interest lay in the solo cello pieces.
James Wilson's Chiaroscuro, completed last year, was being heard for the first time.
The light-dark opposition of the title features most strikingly in the music through a series of rising gestures, moving from the dark depths of the cello register to the brightness of its higher reaches.
The writing is mostly gentle, in spite of some threatening moments, and the straightforward compositional strategy sounded highly effective in Hickey's persuasive performance.
The second solo piece, Reincarnation In Blue, was by the Turkish composer and conductor Inci Özdil, who with her sister Sidika, also a composer, undertook the uphill battle of founding a chamber orchestra in the provincial Turkish city of Antalya.
The sea-inspired work, which was written in 1986, is an old-style,
ardent melodic rhapsody spiced
with some forays into virtuoso
display.
The performances of the two sonatas were compromised by problems of balance between the two players. The usually sensitive Zuk, who had the piano lid on the short stick, often drowned his partner, even at many of those points in the Martinu at which the composer clearly indicated prominence for the cello.
The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski wrote the 20 mazurkas of his Op 50 in the mid 1920s; he dedicated the first four to his friend the pianist Arthur Rubinstein.
It was good to hear the first two of these, from a set that stands as the most important group of mazurkas since Chopin.
Zuk's playing was more persuasive in the plaintive lightness of the first than in the heavier textures of the second.
