Reviewed today: Simply Sondheim at the Liberty Hall Centre and Lukás Vondrácek (piano) at the Waterfront Hall, Belfast
Simply Sondheim, Liberty Hall Centre, Dublin
The title of this show is surely an oxymoron, because Stephen Sondheim is anything but simple. His astonishing creativity has shone through Broadway musicals for four decades now, earning him every possible accolade - Tony, Grammy and Academy awards, and even a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The word genius, not to be lightly bandied about, insists on inserting itself here.
The format is a simple one. Two male and two female singers, accompanied by a grand piano, mine his musicals for about 30 numbers, ranging from stand-alone songs to clever ping-pong excerpts involving two or more of the quartet. They are, without exception, tuneful in the composer's special manner, and the words fuse with the music to convey mood in a most vivid way.
Emotionally they tend towards the bitter-sweet, suggesting heartbreak beneath a sophisticated surface.
Eleven musicals are represented, beginning with Follies and its memorable Losing My Mind and Buddy's Blues. Next is Merrily We Roll Along, a new one to me, with two songs that haunt me still: Old Friends and Good Thing Going.
Anyone Can Whistle gets an outing, with the wistful title song, and the first half also includes the great Company, with its acid-flavoured The Little Things and the exuberant Being Alive.
None of the musicals reprised in the second half have been seen in Dublin to my knowledge, a manifest deprivation. Dick Tracy, Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd display an appealing breadth of comedy and satire, including such notable songs as Children Will Listen and Nothing's Gonna Harm You.
A lively finale ropes in Sunday in the Park With George and A Little Night Music.
The four singers are better than good, whether delivering solo numbers or interacting with complete precision and harmony. Danna Davis is from New York, George Rae from London, and both Ellen McElroy and John Matthews are Dubliners, and they blend perfectly in a songbook that is internationally known and hailed.
They induced in me an inchoate wish to ask if they sang requests, an immature hangover from a faraway youth. (I wonder if they would?) - Gerry Colgan
Runs until September 18th
Lukás Vondrácek, piano - The Studio, Waterfront Hall, Belfast
Mozart . . . . . . . . . . . .Sonata in C K330
Novak . . . . . . . . . . Songs of Winter Night
Smetana . . . . . . . . . . .Three pieces from 'The Dreams'
A prodigy who gave his first concert at the age of four, Czech pianist Lukás Vondrácek, now aged 17, is an accomplished performer, although not one, on this showing at least, who is particularly interested in cultivating beauty of tone for its own sake.
Although his playing is far from unfeeling he does not seem either to be primarily concerned with exploring the instrument's capacity for expressive nuance. Rather he searches for the essence of the music.
The melodic thread of the Mozart sonata was strongly projected and firmly shaped by rhythmic inflection. This was a fresh and individual performance, not superficially pretty, but always compelling attention, and with its own sense of the tragic depths of the middle movement.
Smetana's 'Dreams' cycle dates from the period of 'From Bohemia's Woods and Meadows'. The last of these pieces is a particularly lively dream, a Lisztian virtuoso piece, and it was delivered with energy by Vondrácek. The first of the three excerpts given here had more of a feeling of reverie, as did the four-piece cycle by Vitezslav Novak, the last of the Czech romantic school. His music hovers on the fringes of the repertory, and one suspects that it is usually performed, when it is played at all, by Czech musicians. It is the overall effect made by this refined and expressive music, rather than any of its individual features, which leaves a lasting impression. On this showing Novak has found an advocate with technique and plenty of personality. - Dermot Gault
