Irish Timeswriters review the Trondheim Soloists Chamber Orchestraat the NCH, Phaedraat the Samuel Beckett Theatre and Duke Specialat Tripod in Dublin.
Trondheim Soloists Chamber Orchestra/ Mutter, NCH, Dublin
Bach - Violin Concerto in A minor. Double Violin Concerto. Violin Concerto in E. Tartini/Zandonai - Devil's Trill Sonata.
Thursday's National Concert Hall appearance by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Mikhail Orutsky with the Trondheim Soloists Chamber Orchestra was no ordinary celebrity occasion.
The musicians were raising funds for the hall's education and outreach programme and, with tickets priced at €150, the potential fillip for future projects was substantial.
Mutter played Bach on her first appearance in the hall, with the Irish Chamber Orchestra back in 1989. Her approach to the A minor Concerto on Thursday seemed in a different vein to her earlier approach to Bach, lighter, nimbler, and with, at times in the slow movement, the merest tendril of tone in the solo line.
It seemed as if there was a significant change of interpretative stance.
But the performance of the Concerto in E after the interval gave the lie to that idea. This was the concerto she had played in 1989 and the robust and gutsy style she had shown then was back in abundance, with romantic ardency given a free hand.
The partnership with Mikhail Orutsky in the Double Violin Concerto was a genteel one, the two players at pains to defer to each other, neither, as it were, ready to hog the limelight without the other's permission.
The level of clarity was high, but the sense of contrapuntal engagement was limited.
The Trondheim Soloists Chamber Orchestra was similarly accommodating throughout the evening.
The novelty on the programme was an orchestral version by 20th-century opera composer Riccardo Zandonai of 18th-century violin virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini's most famous work, his Devil's Trill Sonata.
It was a kitschy sort of undertaking, a latter-day fancy-dress approach to the upsizing of one of the most tantalisingly titled of all musical works - Tartini claimed that the idea for the piece had come to him in a dream of the devil playing the fiddle.
Mutter can certainly play the fiddle with a near-devilish skill, and those special Mutter moments which are so much her own - the special melts and glides, the unexpected extremes of dynamics - were altogether more in place in Zandonai's soundscapes than they had been in Bach. And the trills themselves were simply thrilling. - Michael Dervan
Phaedra, Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin
Apart from his original plays, Frank McGuinness has adapted a number of classics for modern audiences. His version of Racine's Phaedra (from a literal translation by Constance Hayes), which opened in London last summer, is as good as any of them and is staged very effectively by the Trinity College Dublin School of Drama.
The young actors have a text to work with that combines a sinewy, vernacular prose with imaginative flights that make credible a world ruled by capricious and merciless gods.
When we meet Phaedra, a dying woman in love with her death, she is at first subdued and almost prosaic. As the play gathers pace, so does she, moving to a tragic ending that is persuasive and moving.
She is an innocent victim of the goddess Venus, who possesses her with a passion for her stepson, Hippolytus. When she learns of the death of her husband Theseus, she feels freed to confess her incestuous lust to the young man, who is repelled by it.
When Theseus turns up alive, multiple tragedies cannot be averted. Neptune is invoked to inflict a merciless revenge on the blameless Hippolytus, Phaedra takes poison and others are destroyed. The special merit of this version lies in its absorbing drama, and the new author has written dialogue that shapes characters and situations in harmony with the rich seam he has mined.
The empathy of the student-cast for their roles is complete and rewarding, and the spare, imaginative set design by Anna Cunningham and Andrew Lennon provides an effective arena for their work.
Rachel West's direction marries all the talents under her control into a seamless unity. - Gerry Colgan
Runs until March 10th
Duke Special, Tripod, Dublin
Last week, Duke Special was widely tipped to win the Choice Music Prize for his richly melodic and warmly cluttered album Songs From The Deep Forest. If the Belfast vaudevillian was disappointed to see the teardrop-shaped trophy (and €10,000 prize-money) go to the no-less deserving Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy instead, it doesn't show: the last night of his Irish tour feels like a victory celebration.
There's no formula for an exceptional performance; no failsafe recipe of capacity crowds, superb musicianship, surprising song inclusions or more surprising guest appearances that ensures a singular night.
It helps that the man sometimes known as Peter Wilson exudes a charming balance of confidence and humility and that his often achingly-sensitive lyrics are delivered from beneath a morass of dreadlocks and eyeliner, which make him seem like a Rastafarian Robert Smith.
The Duke may have toned down his previous junk opera clamour, muting too the gramophone static that made his songs seem like visitors from the attic, but there remains something timeless and startling in his arrangements.
The piano twinkle of Closer to the Start, for instance, is matched with Chip Bailey's hulking percussion. The cabaret pump of Brixton Leaves conceals a more serious lament for his hometown: "Well, curse those fifes and damn those drums".
Even if Wilson's melodies write themselves indelibly on the memory, a Duke sceptic requires some convincing.
Wake Up Scarlett, with its opening shiver of Blur's The Universal, won't quite do it, nor will a solo piano rendition of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Maps, translating female steel into male vulnerability. But by the time Wilson clicks his fingers along a raggedy jazz version of Tainted Love, he couldn't seem more triumphant if a magnanimous Neil Hannon showed up to sing his backing vocals.
At which point, of course, a magnanimous Neil Hannon shows up to sing his backing vocals (augmented with choice ad-libbed jibes). It's that kind of night. Anyone subsequently unmoved by the ramshackle Portrait or the magnificent Freewheel must be in urgent need of defibrillators.
Watching Duke suddenly trash his piano or leading his band into the audience for a final encore of I Saw The Light, nobody could leave here unconvinced. - Peter Crawley
