Reviewed today: Wang, RTE NSO/Markson at the National Concert Hall, Dublin and We Can't Go On Like This at the Lambert Puppet Theatre, Monkstown, Dublin
Wang, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
Weber. . . . . . . . . . . Freischütz Overture
Tchaikovsky. . . . Piano Concerto No 1
Beethoven. . . . . . . Symphony No 7.
For the opening of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's new subscription series, the first with Anglo Irish Bank on board as season sponsor, principal conductor Gerhard Markson chose what you might call a humdinger of a programme.
The best of Carl Maria von Weber's orchestral music is among the most treasurable fruit of the early flowering of German romanticism. His concertos have long fallen out of fashion with NSO planners, but his greatest overtures have held their place in the repertory.
Markson's careful contouring of the atmospheric opening of the overture to Der Freischütz spoke as convincingly of his affection for the music as did the weighty thrust of the more highly energised sections.
Canadian pianist Li Wang was one those players at last year's AXA Dublin International Piano Competition who made his way into the finals almost, as it were, under the radar. He secured the second prize and a concerto appearance with the NSO by producing his best playing on the night when it counted most.
On Friday he repeated his concerto choice from the competition, Tchaikovsky's First. And once again he found in his performance of this old warhorse the masterful authority, technical aplomb, and musical certainty which he had showed to greater effect in the finals than at any other stage in the competition.
The dominating strand in this year's NSO season will be the music of Stravinsky which, beginning next Friday, will be surveyed through 19 works from all creative periods.
For the opening programme, however, Markson chose to sample another, even more central pre-occupation within the season. Next May he's going to conduct all nine Beethoven symphonies in five concerts on five successive days.
Friday's foretaste offered a highly energised account of the Seventh, the drive more burly than tight, the balances not always finely drawn either between wind and strings or, within the strings, between first and second violins. The relative calm of the Allegretto was affectingly conveyed, but elsewhere the focus was on the energy with which this most highly-charged of symphonies drives all before it.
Michael Dervan
We Can't Go On Like This
The annual international puppet theatre festival, hosted by the Lambert Puppet Theatre in Monkstown, has always been instructional as well as entertaining. Puppetry is a truly traditional form of stagecraft, and each country has its own form and style. The Turkish company Tiyatrotem bases its work on shadow theatre, popular improvisational theatre and storytelling.
The story is related by two storytellers/puppeteers, Sehsuvar Aktas and Ayse Selen, and is about two women who live at opposite ends of the land with their two servants. They hugely overeat, and keep their servants busy cooking to sate their endless appetites. Then one day they simply burst.
Thus freed, the servants begin, literally, to have a ball. But they leave their shadow screens and become lost in a world of circus and more.
Looking for their way home, they find other unfamiliar and menacing screens, even venturing out among the audience. But it all ends happily.
This is all conveyed with fun and transparency; even though the language used is Turkish, words are minimal.
The visual content is strong and easily absorbed. Although framed for adults, this show has a beguiling simplicity and charm that appeals to all ages.
Gerry Colgan
