Reviewed today are the Martinu Quartet at Castletown House, Co Kildare, organist Mark Duley at St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire and Universal Export at the Project, Dublin
Music in Great Irish Houses: Carr,
Martinu Quartet
Castletown House,
Co Kildare
Haydn - Quartet in G minor Op 74 No 3 (Rider). Janácek - Quartet No 2 (Intimate Letters). Schubert - String Quintet
It's been 13 years since the Martinu String Quartet last visited Ireland. In 1991 the group undertook a tour for Music Network. On their return last weekend they gave the final two concerts of the Music in Great Irish Houses festival.
The closing concert, given at Castletown House, included the Second Quartet, Intimate Letters, by Leos Janácek. This work is from the composer's late creative flowering, when he was obsessed by his love for a younger woman: the quartet, which was originally to have been subtitled Love Letters, was intended as a direct vehicle for his feelings.
Saturday's performance served as a reminder that Janácek's music sounds subtly different in the hands of Czech musicians. It's a matter of inflection and nuance, of the way, as it were, a breath is taken or a chord is allowed to linger.
The Martinu Quartet's playing wasn't always ingratiating in terms of musical tuning, but it always communicated the music with passion and point.
The players' handling of Haydn's Rider quartet was agreeably understated. And their approach, with the cellist Colin Carr, in Schubert's sublime String Quintet was a mixture of alfresco enthusiasm and refined expression, of rough edges and angelic sweetness.
- Michael Dervan
Mark Duley (organ)
St Michael's,
Dún Laoghaire
Sweelinck - Toccata in C. Scheidt - Fantasia Super Io Son Ferito Lasso. Bach - Schübler Chorale Preludes. Böhm - Partita on Jesu du bist allzu schöne. Bruhns - Praeludium in G
Mark Duley, artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, director of the Pipeworks festival, chorus master of the RTÉ Philharmonic choir and, from 1992 to 2003, organist and director of music at Christ Church in Dublin, gave this organ recital at St Michael's in Dún Laoghaire.
His all-baroque programme framed the six Schübler chorale preludes by Bach with pieces by Sweelinck, Scheidt, Böhm and Bruhns. The playing style was in most respects more studious than imaginative. The tempos were safe. The rubato sounded more a business of calculation by rule than a matter of rhetorical or expressive purpose. And the moment-by-moment shaping of each piece didn't really generate much sense of the architecture of the whole.
The major exception was in the area of colour, where Duley showed a fondness for often lurid, sometimes even grotesque-sounding registration.
His most successful venture in this area came towards the end of the evening, in the light, music-boxy world he evoked for Böhm's partita on 'Jesu du bist allzu schöne'. And the outer sections of the closing Praeludium in G by Bruhns had something of the purposeful drive that had been missing in the clean but rather dry music-making that characterised most of his recital.
- Michael Dervan
Universal Export
Project, Dublin
It's that time of year when the Gaiety School of Acting proudly puts its graduating talents on display, and, as before, two plays have been commissioned for the occasion. They both march under the banner of Universal Export, the name of a parcel-delivery firm.
Alex Johnston is the author of the first, named Day Shift, which homes in on a handful of employees trying to cope. All the computers have been stolen, and they are required by their boss to do the best they can, pending the machines' replacement. They bicker, manage the phones and the complaining customers, and still find time to talk a lot about their private affairs.
One of the girls, Ger, takes a large share of the limelight. She is unwell, and has a dream in which nightmarish doctors and nurses quiz her about her psychological health. Her impending marriage, and the way she has managed her life so far, oppress her. The shift ends, and with it the play.
There is a slight spillover into the second play, Night Shift by Joanna Anderson. Here the shift manager happens to be Ger's fiancé, now dumped, and in the process of learning that he is gay.
One of his male staff encourages him in this endeavour, and there is some fun in their exchanges. Other than that the second play bears a strong resemblance to the first, and most of the female roles could be exchanged without doing violence to the respective scenarios. Each has parts for six women and three men.
The objective is, of course, to give the fledgling actors an opportunity to flex their talents in front of a live audience. In this the production succeeds, although the roles as written are, unavoidably, limited in scope.
The casts do, however, give ample evidence of rigorous and skilled training, reflected in excellent diction and natural movement. They conclude with a rousing dance number that ends the evening on a good-humoured note.
Gerry Colgan
