Whats going on in the world of the arts? The Irish Times finds out.
The Finn Brothers
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Together and apart, Tim and Neil Finn have made some of the most tuneful pop music of the past 25 years. Classy, dignified and with the best of intentions, the New Zealand brothers always seem to place melody first, words second and the inalienable right to be, well, very good close behind.
Between Split Enz, Crowded House and their separate, hardly distinctive careers, the Finns obviously go back a long way. The opening home-movie excerpts - wherein it seems as if the entire Finn family is being introduced to the capacity audience - highlight the fact that, differences through the decades aside, the brothers have finally allowed their paths to intersect 10 years after the release of their début collaborative album, Finn. The result is probably the least surprising gig of the year: we know what to expect, we know the calibre of what the Finns do. Frankly, if the gig had been anything less than excellent, your reviewer would have asked for his time back.
Nothing Wrong With You - from the pair's recently released album, Everyone is Here - was a smooth entry into selections from Split Enz (Six Months in a Leaky Boat), Crowded House (Four Seasons in One Day, There Goes God, Distant Sun) and the brothers' respective solo material. If the sound was a little ragged, there was always a tune coming right and left of centre to drag the audience along, and if the guitars rang out too loudly for everyone's tastes, then there were regular strums on the acoustic and finger exercises on the piano.
What it all amounted to was a concert as familiar as home; if it veered more towards comfort than conflict this was surely due to the nature of the show, which was geared primarily for smoothness and charm. There's nothing wrong with that either, especially when it's executed with such humour and panache.
The support act, as a matter of some interest, was actress Minnie Driver, whose supple blend of country rock and tough Americana subtly impressed.
Should the movie career nosedive she could well give a few better-known people a run for their money. Tony Clayton-Lea
Craig Ogden
The Coach House, Dublin Castle
The Australian classical guitarist, Craig Ogden, opened his Music Network tour of Ireland with a highly impressive recital at the Coach House. He mixed standard repertoire with some less familiar material and included two premieres in the programme.
He opened with standards. Dowland's Lachrime Pavane and Fantasia No 7 were performed crisply with a suitably lute-like timbre. Choros No 1, by Villa-Lobos, was brilliantly playful and full of tonal variation and colour while maintaining rhythmic clarity.
The first premiere of the evening was Hinchinbrook, by Australian composer Nigel Westlake. It requires a digital delay, whereby everything the guitarist plays is digitally echoed half a second later, making it a sort of duet for one that requires great precision. At times, the layered repetitive patterns that emerged sounded minimalist, but the piece was also full of movement and abrupt, unpredictable phrases. The performance was note-perfect and absorbing.
Ogden closed the half with Bach's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV998. The first two movements were well judged, particularly the Fugue, where the separate voices were all strikingly clear. However, the Allegro seemed a little rushed.
The dominant work of the second half was Voces Criticas (Critical Voices), a new three-movement work by composer/guitarist Benjamin Dwyer, commissioned by Music Network and Lyric FM. Dwyer's guitar music has always been technically demanding and strikingly suited to the instrument, and Voces proved no exception. It made ridiculous technical demands, but Ogden managed with effortless virtuosity. The opening Pasacalle took a slow, descending chromatic line and gradually layered it with increasingly extraordinary embellishments. The second movement was deliberately fragmented and mysterious, while the conclusion, Pasillos, was an exhaustive exploration of the guitar's repertoire of sounds and was bursting with ideas. Voces was all highly theatrical, exhilarating music.
Among the remaining items were some charming, little-known Greek pieces and an outstanding version of Sevilla by Albéniz. Because of its tempo and high pitch, Sevilla can often sound rushed and hysterical, but Ogden brought out the melody gently and restrained the tempo. A hugely satisfying evening.
Tour continues (all shows at 8 p.m.) at St Mary's Church of Ireland, New Ross, tomorrow: St Michael's Church of Ireland, Ballina, on Friday; Siamsa Tire, Tralee, on Sunday; Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, on Monday, November 8th; St Mary's Church of Ireland, Navan, on Tuesday, November 9th Alex Moffatt
Follies
SFX City Theatre, Dublin
With a book by James Goldman, and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Follies is now more than 30 years old and remains one of the great American musicals. This production by DAYMS: The Musical Workshop has its limitations and constraints, but the engaging story and brilliant songs still make it a pleasurable experience.
An old, disused theatre is about to be demolished, and a crowd of its one-time stars and artistes gather to toast its demise. Singers, dancers, chorines and their men turn up for a night of showbiz nostalgia. The dreams of long ago, and the disillusionments of the present, are underpinned by conjured-up younger selves who mingle with their elders, contrasting their youthful passions with the cynicism awaiting them.
In the large cast of some 40 performers, there are four lead characters: Ben (Brian Merriman), Phyllis (Carrie Crowley), Buddy (Karl Cassells) and Sally (Kathy Kelly). All are disillusioned with life, and on this night of memory and drink, they tread on the thin ice of the past. They have wonderful songs - Don't Look at Me, Too Many Mornings, the cynical Could I Leave You?, The Right Girl, Losing My Mind and more - and the singers are in top form, vocally and psychologically, in delivering them.
The supporting cast also has, chorally and individually, cameo numbers to belt out. Showstoppers - well, they deserve to be - are the bitter-sweet Broadway Baby from Rita Singleton, and Glynis Casson's trumpeted defiance, I'm Still Here. The lead quartet's younger selves have a harmonised double in You're Gonna Love Tomorrow and Love Will See Us Through. The whole show is, indeed, a cornucopia of exceptional musical creations.
The qualifications mentioned earlier relate to a general ambience of penny-pinching, no doubt unavoidable but destructive of glamour - although an effort is made. More importantly, the acoustics are of the now-you-hear-it, now-you-don't variety, from which words and music suffered. But for the show itself, and the many pleasures embedded in this production, I would not willingly have missed it.
Runs until Saturday Gerry Colgan
William Butt, Orchestra of St Cecilia/Douglas
NCH, Dublin
Mozart - Magic Flute Overture
Haydn - Cello Concerto in D
Elgar - Serenade for strings
Elgar - Cello Concerto
It's an attractive idea to place two cello concertos in the one programme, as soloist William Butt and the Orchestra of St Cecilia under Barry Douglas are doing at the National Concert Hall this month.
On Tuesday, the first of the three programmes juxtaposed Haydn's Concerto in D with Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, and Elgar's Concerto in E minor with the composer's much earlier Serenade for Strings in the same key.
Butt has always struck me as a performer who is more interesting to listen to when inwardly ruminating than when called upon to engage his listeners through extrovert virtuosity.
Both of the concertos call for a soloist who can run the gamut, and Butt sounded distinctly more comfortable in rendering what Ernest Newman called Elgar's "realisation in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth".
The musical partnership between soloist and conductor seemed tighter in the Haydn, where a relaxed warmth was evident all round. The colours of Elgarian autumn proved elusive in the orchestral playing, in spite of the idiomatic advocacy of the solo playing.
Similarly, in the two purely orchestral pieces, there was an excess of emotional reserve in Elgar's Serenade, while the Magic Flute Overture was handled with altogether more persuasive brio. Michael Dervan
