ANDREW JOHNSTONEreviews the RTÉ NSO's version of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungat the NCH, while  PETER CRAWLEY reviews Ghostface Killah at The Tivoli

Theorin, RTÉ NSO/Ringborg
NCH, Dublin
Wagner - Ring of the Nibelung
THE PENULTIMATE concert of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's current season distilled the titanic Ringcycle down to just over an hour and a quarter of juicy bits.

Still, Ireland's Wagnerians hadn't had a bigger fix on home soil since August 2002, when the entire Ringwas auspiciously given in four concerts at Limerick by the National Youth Orchestra under Alexander Anisssimov.

Two of the NSO's seven excerpts respectively included the rich solo voices of bass-baritone Matthew Best and soprano Iréne Theorin.

While neither's stamina was taxed as it would have been by a fully staged performance, both singers engaged the on-platform orchestra's unchecked volume with decibels often to spare.

Both too were satisfyingly typecast. Best, despite a niggling dryness of voice, delivered Wotan's farewells in the requisite spirit of granite resignation, and Theorin gloried in Brünnhilde's final orations with dignified incandescence. It was in these two sung excerpts that guest conductor Patrik Ringborg obtained the evening's more exciting playing.

Though Forest Murmursyielded sensitive responses from the lower strings, there had been a hard feel to the orchestral cushion in Entry of the Gods(where the placing of certain instruments backstage proved ill-advised).

Sheer force, as opposed to tense precision, generated the thrills in the Ride of the Valkyries, while conservative pacing drained the high charge from Siegfried's Rhine Journeyand the potentially formidable Funeral March.

Ringborg's approach was equally careful in the Immolation Scene, although here, as if catalysed by the arrival of Theorin, new lustre and energy descended on the music-making. This dose of Wagner had intoxicated at the last.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE

Ghostface Killah
The Tivoli, Dublin
"WE GOT a lot of s**t to get through," announces Ghostface Killah, sounding a little daunted by the expanse of his back catalogue. He is resolute though: "We gonna have fun and s**t." In hindsight, it's hard to tell which statement was least encouraging. But whether it was his brief, truncated performance or the goofier indulgences of his accomplices, one of the most promising hip-hop appearances of the year utterly failed to deliver.

In a music famed for young guns and early retirements Ghostface is still a powerful creative force at the age of 38 (which is about 75 in rap years), his reputation entwined with the Wu Tang Clan, the still fabled Statten Island group who helped to redefine hip-hop in the nineties.

That makes his appearance in the intimate club space at The Tivoli seem both pressurised and throwaway, rolling through his history with a shrugging sense of duty. Arriving late to a stage where the contents of his rider are set out neatly beside the turntables, Ghostface and five or so non-entities from his Theodore Unit (everybody's got a unit these days) tear through Tony Siegel, Ice Cream, Be Easyand Smith Brothers, covering a stretch of several albums and side-projects in a matter of minutes.

Ghostface, whose best rhymes are dense with unexpected detail and flowing streams of consciousness, is no slouch. In performance his voice carries a trademark sharp tang and effortless command, but tonight he seems on autopilot.

The snippet approach to almost every song doesn't help, their soul samples and spiky verses invariably cut short by the DJ. This covers a lot of ground without letting us enjoy the sights, like a bus tour of a vast country that never makes a stop.

That would be forgivable were it not for two ridiculous, time-wasting interludes when audience members are called onstage to prove their emcee skills (they have none) and a representative sample of "the ladeez" are brought on stage to gyrate over Greedy Bitches. The suspicions of misogyny and laziness that dog live hip-hop only deepen, but the more disheartening suggestion of this poor showing is that Ghostface's genius can be appreciated on record alone.
PETER CRAWLEY