MICHAEL DERVANreviews the latest shows

RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin

Berlioz — Requiem.
"OFTEN AT performances of my Requiem," wrote Berlioz, "one man will be trembling, shaken to the depths of his soul, while the man next to him sits there listening intently and understanding nothing."

The Requiem is famous, not to say notorious, for the extravagance of some of its demands. The four brass bands to be placed around the performing space would amount to 38 players if Berlioz had his way, the complement of strings would run to 108, and the percussion section would include 10 pairs of cymbals.

Even when pared back to an affordable playing strength, the piece is as remarkable for effects of strange spareness and simplicity as for the thrilling saturation of the extra brass for the Tuba mirumin the Dies irae. The chorus in the Offertoirehave a rocking line that uses just two notes throughout. There are alternations of single notes on flutes and trombones in the Agnus Deiwhich can sound closer to the present than to 1837 when the piece was actually written.

Friday's performance by the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and National Symphony Orchestra under Gerhard Markson, the closing concert of the orchestra's current season, would probably have managed at times to perplex both of Berlioz's imaginary listeners.

On the one hand there were passages where Markson's cut-and-dried rhythmic delivery undermined the blossoming of Berlioz's idiosyncratic imagination.

There was a tendency for the conducting to seem reined in, almost stiff.

On the other, there were moments that must have sent shivers down anyone's spine, not only in the realm of the expected brassy spectacle, but also through the strange murmurs of multiple quiet drums, the open-throated choral grandeur of the Rex tremendae, or the juggernaut choral drive at the end of the Sanctus.

There were some moments of strain and pinched intonation in the choral singing, but the members of the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir had a mostly good night.

The Russian tenor Daniil Shtoda, making his Dublin debut, had an extremely good night in a contribution that was vibrant, clear and musically commanding. In spite of its odd limitations, this was a performance that left one in awe of Berlioz's creativity and chutzpah.

And that's fully to everyone's credit.
MICHAEL DERVAN

NCC/Holten
National Gallery, Dublin

THE NATIONAL Chamber Choir's new artistic director, Paul Hillier, has chosen Baltic Blues, an exploration of music from countries around the Baltic sea, as the theme of his first season with the choir. His actual debut as artistic director is scheduled for Belfast on June 11th, and the first, wide-ranging Baltic programme was given at the National Gallery on Thursday under Denmark's Bo Holten, who also featured as a composer.

Holten framed the evening with contemporary offerings. He opened with Henryk Górecki's Totus tuus, a work that was already making headway in the West before the runaway success of the composer's Third Symphony in 1992. It was written in 1987 for a visit to Poland by Pope John Paul II, and has always struck me as having a sweetness that's as excessive as that of Gounod and other late 19th-century composers of religious music.

Holten's own A Time for Everything(setting Ecclesiastes) opens as a sombre, tolling piece, and builds up to a rather anguished climax after which it morphs into a mode of sweeter optimism.

The only other familiar names represented were from the 16th century, Luca Marenzio, who worked at the court of King Sigismund III Vasa in Poland and Leonard Lechner, who wrote music to celebrate a fountain that was commissioned for Copenhagen in 1575.

The little-known figures were Vincenzo Bertolusi, also employed by Sigismund III, Paulus Bucenus Philorodus, who worked in Riga, and Johann Stobaeus, who worked in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in the first half of the 17th century.

From a musical standpoint it's probably a little unkind to pit these minor figures against the likes of Marenzio. Their perfectly fine work - the smooth-flowing, soft, high soprano lines of Bertolusi's Ego flos campimade the deepest impression - is dwarfed by the extraordinary variety and resourcefulness of Marenzio's imagination.

Holten offered some Marenzio madrigals in one voice to a part performances, as well as motets of ravishing complexity.

The choir's performances were not quite as sharp as listeners have come to expect, with moments of raggedness of attack and looseness in delivery in their generally sensitive performances. There's some tightening up for Hillier to do when he takes over next month.
MICHAEL DERVAN