Irish Timeswriters review Angela Hewittin the NCH, Malajubein Crawdaddy and Mushroomat the Civic Theatre.
Angela Hewitt (piano), NCH, Dublin
Schumann - Kinderszenen. Humoreske. Bach - Goldberg Variations.
There was a time when the future of piano music was predicted to be on period instruments. I remember the late Brian Boydell telling me in the 1980s that concerts of Beethoven on modern concert grands would soon be a thing of the past. He seems to have been doubly wrong. Not only has the prophecy fallen behind schedule, but things have gone into reverse, with pianists recolonising the music of Bach and other baroque composers.
Ottawa-born Angela Hewitt has been at the vanguard of this development.
She won the 1985 International Bach Piano Competition in Toronto, an event set up to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Bach and also the Bach playing of Canada's best-known musician, Glenn Gould, who died in 1982 at the age of 50.
Gould was a wayward kind of genius, an eccentric performer whose musical conceptions were often as interesting for their daring as for any durable musical insights.
Hewitt, by contrast, is a centralist. Her Bach playing is suave and well polished. It flows easily and is rhythmically pert. The layering is controlled and logical. Gould was a master of light and shade who liked to play with the music's contrapuntal richness. Hewitt takes a simpler approach, spotlighting what she sees as most important and leaving other material in the background.
The best of her playing at her National Concert Hall debut on Thursday came in Bach's Goldberg Variations. She presented this mammoth undertaking (with only a handful of repeats) in a fashion that was always easy on the ear, and seemed geared to minimise the kind of tension that other players like to seek out. With the exception of some growling added octaves in Variation 29, it was a style of Bach playing to soothe the senses rather than stir the mind or the passions.
Hewitt seemed less comfortable in the Schumann of the first half. The Humoreske (replacing the originally advertised Noveletten) requires a richer vein of fantasy than she was able to muster. And even the well-known Scenes from Childhood stuttered a bit from stop-go rubato, and a shortage of persuasive characterisation. There's a lot more to these pieces than Hewitt's shallow responses revealed. Michael Dervan
Malajube, Crawdaddy, Dublin
Montreal, it seems, is the world's new music capital, with The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and this latest gem, Malajube, all hailing from Canada.
Malajube are a swirling mix of influences that call on a high-calibre rack of precursors to produce music that is irresistible to the ear.
Punky, hard-core guitar riffs meander off into odd Jeff Buckley-esque chord sequences, only to be spiked through by gorgeous choruses that, despite the language barrier, have most in the crowd attempting a singalong in Leaving Cert French. Montreal -400 C is a case in point: if there is an inherent sweet, pop sensibility on the record, live it's largely scrubbed clean by the band's punkier inclinations. But when the chorus kicks in, it will have you bah, bah, baah-ing with the best of them.
The band supported Arcade Fire on their last European tour, and, while it's easy to make the comparison, Malajube feel closer to their compatriots, Broken Social Scene, or even NYC rockers Built to Spill.
The tracks are layered and chaotic, bursting through with ideas and suggestions and almost threatening to unravel with the musical turmoil churning beneath the surface.
Julien Mineau's vocal is so achy and scratchy that it threatens to shatter, and here, just before it gets self-indulgent, he mocks himself a little, growling his way towards the end of one track. With five members of the band squashed onto the stage, there is a shimmering, swaggering energy to the group, and if that doesn't keep the ladies in the audience happy, then Mineau's heavily accented French, echoing out of the tunnel of his hooded top and lank hair, certainly will.
A shockingly short set of barely 45 minutes is blamed on "a curfew", but even had Malajube doubled the set, it's hard to imagine the crowd leaving without demanding an encore. Laurence Mackin
Mushroom, Civic Theatre, Tallaght
Storytellers Theatre Company, under the artistic direction of Liam Halligan, is seeking new stories to tell, and new ways of telling them. Their new play, written by Paul Meade, is a look at immigrants in Ireland, and the cast of six are Romanian, Polish and Irish, bringing authenticity to their characters and situations.
Their low-paid work has mostly to do with the harvesting and packing of mushrooms.
A young Polish woman, Ewa, has followed the husband who deserted her, in vain. She makes friends with Romanian Maria, who is disoriented in her new position, and they both consider their next move. Ewa's footloose father, a loner in love with ancient tombs, is there too.
Irishman Michael has gone to see his Romanian mother's grave, and to meet his uncle Radu, in Bucharest. Other young male roles fill in relationships and encounters. All the characters are restless, not content in their daily toil, and as subject
to the attractions of the opposite sex as your average young person.
But, as the title may suggest, nothing much happens. They are birds of passage, stopped briefly in their flight to better things - if they can find them. It is interesting to look at and listen to them as they converse, creating the sense of a diaspora that once characterised the Irish, but is now universal. Their talk ranges from the melancholic to the humorous, leaving a sense that there is a lot more to the theme than is explored here - unfinished business.
The acting by Cristina Catalina, Carl Kennedy, Natalia Kostrzewa, Emmet Kirwan, Janusz Sheagall and Dan Tudor is excellent. Gerry Colgan
To June 9th; then on tour
