Irish Times writers review the Vogler String Quartet at the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House, Belfast, the Aron String Quartet at St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle, Siirala, the and RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet at the National Gallery, Dublin.
Vogler String Quartet
Royal Hospital, Donnybrook
Martin Adams
Schubert - Quartettsatz in C minor D703. Dvorák - Quartet in F Op 96 (The American). Beethoven - Quartet in F Op 59 No 1 (Rasumovsky)
The Vogler String Quartet is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its foundation, in what in 1985 was East Berlin. It is appropriate that they should give a celebratory concert in Ireland, for their contribution here has been immense. They first came to this country in 1988, thanks to the efforts of the Limerick Music Association and John and Doreen Ruddock. The LMA has since disbanded; but the indefatigable Ruddocks continue concert promotion, including this one.
The concert showed why the Vogler Quartet is so widely admired. Some might prefer playing that is more blended, that creates the polished perfection typified by the Amadeus Quartet. However, that is not the Voglers' priority, though they are perfectly capable of it when appropriate.
The most striking feature of their playing is a discourse of four individuals who adapt to one another; a discourse in which any of them seems willing to do something that might surprise his fellows and to which they might respond accordingly. It seems unlikely that they play the same work exactly the same way twice. They made the Scherzo in the first of Beethoven's "Rasumovsky" quartets, Op 59 No 1 sound startling, which was it seemed to the composer's contemporaries.
There was polished elegance in the shaping of melody in Schubert's Quartettsatze in C minor D703. However, the contrast between melodic elegance and edgy accompaniment gave the movement extraordinary tension. Dvorák's Quartet in F Op 96 (The American) was the sunny piece it surely should be. Yet, for similar reasons, it too had unusual intensity.
The slow movement of the Beethoven was extraordinary. It had such a range of colour, such intense and subtle feeling, that it achieved the ideal of all performance. It made you wonder if there was any music much better than this.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Jane Coyle
At last . . . a big, glossy pantomime, which tells a traditional story in time-honoured fashion and sends children away with lasting memories of a magical Christmas treat. This year the Grand Opera House has spared no expense in delivering its audiences extremely high production values, while turning its back on costly television castings and showy "turns", which have little or nothing to do with the fairytale at the heart of the experience.
Instead, the main departure from tradition is in the unnecessary renaming of the jolly little chaps, in whose pretty cottage Snow White (Claire Doyle) takes refuge from her scheming stepmother, Queen Lucretia (Linda Nolan in splendidly raunchy, tongue-in-cheek form).
Doyle's pert performance is prettily matched by Mark Adamson's tall, good-looking Prince Michael. Having been a flesh-and-blood MC at the Best funeral that morning, Eamonn Holmes reappears in virtual form, as a world-weary Man in the Mirror. Local comic actors William Caulfield and Paddy Jenkins hit the right note as the genial Muddles and his evil alter-ego Chambers. And with so much genuine talent around, Dame May McFetridge is not required to graft as hard as usual to plug the gaps, though her leering Nurse May produces plenty of wonderfully wicked moments.
There are some spectacular set pieces - the inner chamber of Lucretia's flame-lit boudoir and the Frederick Ashton-inspired animal ballet in the forest. Add to that seven small but perfectly formed characterisations, excellent choreography and dance and an original score delivered live by Wilson Shields and the band, and the result from director Jonathan Best is arguably the best Opera House panto in many moons.
Continues until Jan 28
Aron String Quartet
St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle
Michael Dungan
Haydn - Quartet in F Op 77 No 2. Brahms - Quartet in A minor Op 51. Korngold - Quartet No 3
In sport, a losing team can often turn the game around, if the manager makes good half-time adjustments. Something akin to this must have happened for the Aron string quartet from Austria. Their refined, liquid playing of Haydn and Brahms in the first half was disrupted - out of the blue - by brief instances of harshness and the occasional ill-tuned note.
That delicate, intrinsic balancing act between the collective and the individual in quartet-playing seemed askew. For although the Aron's collective cohesion was to be admired, individual expression seemed stifled. It was hard not to wonder whether this subservience to the greater good might have something to do with their day-jobs as players in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra.
But they came out like a different team after half-time and performed Korngold's Quartet No 3 with heightened engagement as well as greatly improved tone and tuning.
It's an oversimplification to brand Korngold as the gifted composer who prostituted his talent to the less substantial but more profitable musical endeavour of the Hollywood filmscore composer. It's not enough even to say that he saved a different voice for his non-cinematic compositions. For in these, when he had the chance, he would include material from his filmscores: a good tune is a good tune. The Third Quartet contains quotations from Between Two Worlds, The Sea Wolf and Devotion.
The Aron string quartet champions the works of the Second Viennese School, so it was a pity that no work by Schoenberg, Berg or Webern featured in the programme. But the inclusion of this rarely-performed, Schoenberg-influenced work by Korngold will no doubt have won new friends for the composer.
Siirala, RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet
National Gallery, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Haydn - Quartet in C Op 33 No 3. Stephen Gardner - Quartet No 3. Franck - Piano Quintet
Comparisons may be odious. However, for anyone who heard both the RTÉ Vanbrugh and Austria's Aron quartets within less than 24 hours over the weekend, comparisons were hard to avoid, especially since both groups played Haydn.
The Vanbrugh's Haydn offered so much that had been missing from the Aron's troubled performance the night before (happily, the visitors played other music better). It was not merely that the Vanbrugh were vastly more clean and polished, but rather that they appeared to engage with the music with intense consistency, bar-by-bar, so that both detail and the big picture were well served.
Nicknamed "The Bird", the second of Haydn's ground-breaking Op 33 set features moments of delicate, bird-like twittering which leader Gregory Ellis delivered with easy, light-fingered animation.
Stephen Gardner's 17-minute String Quartet No 3 - commissioned by the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and premiered there by the Vanbrugh last June - seizes attention by starting at the edge of audibility.
Long, very quiet chords underscore glimpses of a brief, darting figure which becomes increasingly active as it is passed among the instruments.
After a short return to complete silence, it is perhaps this same little figure that now transforms into a running, machine-like ostinato which eventually grows into a great, pulsing factory of sound coloured with patches of eerie harmonics and sliding glissandi.
It all ends with what sounds like the gentle jangle of an oriental brass bell.
It's hard to make any connection between this tightly-conceived (if slightly over-long) and nicely paced work and its frivolous sub-title, Don't push your granny when she's shavin'. Indeed, in his programme note, Gardner as much as insists that listeners are to make of it what they will.
This fine concert was capped off with a stormy, no-holds-barred account of Franck's impassioned, love-drenched Piano Quintet, featuring the 2003 AXA Dublin Piano Competition winner Antti Siirala.
