Reviewed today are: the Cleveland Orchestra/Welser-Möst at NCH, Dublin, Mark Geary at Whelans, Dublin and A Midsummer Night's Dream, St Stephen's Green, Dublin.
Cleveland Orchestra/Welser-Möst at NCH, Dublin: For its first visit to the National Concert Hall on Friday, opening the new NCH/ Sunday Times International Orchestra Series, the Cleveland Orchestra offered an unusual, concerto-less programme.
Debussy's Jeux, his last orchestral score, was commissioned by Diaghilev, "a terrifying but irresistible man", said the composer, "able to instil the spirit of the dance into lifeless stones".
In the scenario by Nijinksy, recorded Debussy, "there is park, a tennis court, there is the chance meeting of two girls and a young man seeking a lost ball, a nocturnal mysterious landscape, and together with this a suggestion of something sinister in the darkening shadows of night".
The ballet was not a success, and was also unfortunate in having its première just two weeks before the première of premières in 1913, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Yet there's an influential body of opinion which regards Jeux as having been more prophetic than The Rite, heralding, in the words of Pierre Boulez, "the arrival of a kind of musical form which, renewing itself from moment to moment, implies a similarly instantaneous mode of perception".
Mahler's Seventh Symphony, written in 1904 and 1905, proved a notable success for the composer at its première in Prague in 1908. For the composer's biographer, Henri-Louis de la Grange, it's "an extreme case", marking "the furthest point to which Mahler advanced on the road to musical modernism".
For a long time, however, it has been the composer's least-performed symphony, posing problems of cohesion in performance that conductors have struggled to master.
Friday's performances by the Cleveland Orchestra, under its music director Franz Welser-Möst, were as spotlessly clean and tidy as you'd expect the kitchen in a showhouse to be. The ensemble was tight, the articulation sharp, the internal balances about as lucid as you could wish for. The expressive tone was cool rather than warm, the manner even at climaxes showing a kind of well-bred reserve rather than anything that might smack of unbridled gutsiness.
Welser-Möst's approach in the Debussy was more nostalgic than forward-looking, smooth and sweet rather than strange and haunting. And he narrowed the extraordinary expressive range of Mahler, bringing a kind of neatness to a composer who often worked at the boundaries of inclusiveness and good taste.
There was an approving quote in the printed programme about Welser-Möst as "someone who syncs up with" what the Cleveland Orchestra does best: precision. However, his control of that remarkable precision on Friday seemed to have left the fundamental spirit of the music rather too consistently out of the musical equation.
Michael Dervan
Mark Geary at Whelans, Dublin: Mark Geary stands corrected. As Whelans threatens to drown him in Friday-night affection, the singer-songwriter explains that his fine new record, "is about fighting for your right to fail".
Take the Olympics, he expounds, where Ireland cannot even scrape bronze The crowd bellows news of Cian O'Connor. "Was it Gold?" asks Geary, his eyebrows leaping. Gold, indeed. Without a moment's hesitation, Geary continues: "This is a song about winners!"
Words cannot convey how perfectly Gearyish the moment is; a poet of disillusion and opportunism once again clutching victory from the jaws of defeat.
"We are only learning to die," goes The Gingerman, his song for winners, which jumps the spirits with its melody, and saddles the soul with its chorus.
A green card holder who chiselled his songcraft in New York, the Dubliner is equally capable of admiring his own posters as serenading his doom.
"I don't know how much time we're given," he wonders in Ghosts.
"Hail Mary, motherless grace," he swoons through It Beats Me. "God doesn't know me or answer my call," he laments in Adam & Eve. Inconsolable lyrics all, but whether performed solo or with the sensitive accompaniment of a full band, the melody always grants him redemption.
Songs from the drawer marked "gossamer", such as Suzanne, Beautiful or recent single You're The Only Girl, are charmingly delivered, but it's "the old Jedi mind tricks" perceived within his oblique politics that hint at his beliefs.
Although he should never graft top-10 hits to his back-catalogue (big mistake, Mark) his only other misstep is to fall prey to the adoration of the crowd.
Departing the stage to walk amongst them, he looks worryingly Messiah-like - perhaps even Skywalkeresque.
But the band anticipate the return of the Jedi. God may have walked out on us, Geary teaches, but The Force is always there.
Peter Crawley
A Midsummer Night's Dream in St Stephen's Green: The Public Shakespeare company, manned by students of the Gaiety School of Acting, has returned to St Stephen's Green for its fourth consecutive annual spree in the intimate arena under the Yeats Memorial statue. Shakespeare's comedy is especially suited to the outdoors, and the energetic company seizes the opportunities it offers them.
It is not, naturally, the most polished of productions. The play has been trimmed, both of characters and dialogue, but retains the essentials of the Athenian quartet of troubled lovers, their social superiors, the main forest spirits and some of the strolling players - the rude mechanicals.
Presumably to facilitate costuming, the indoor setting is Athens General Hospital, so that white coats, dressing gowns and basic uniforms fill the bill. Jumping ahead, it does seem odd that the two remaining fairies should be converted into infirm patients.
The story goes with a swing, spiked with a little extra dialogue and a few pop songs strictly for fun. Puck is played by a Spanish actress of striking appearance, whose accent suppresses some of her words.
There is a certain amount of doubling up of roles, which generally works well without distorting the action.
The playlet that ends the play, the hilarious story of Pyramus and Thisby, is a little filleted here, but has an excellent Bottom, with Peter Quince taking a hand.
In general, the actors belie their student status with personable presences and mercifully audible voices. Admission to the 90-minute show is free, although a voluntary subscription is always welcome.
Daily to Thursday at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Gerry Colgan
